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Tales of Chinatown

by Sax Rohmer · English · Gutenberg #5697 · 471,830 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Tales of Chinatown

Author: Sax Rohmer


        
Release date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #5697]
                Most recently updated: March 9, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5697

Credits: Produced by Alan Johns, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF CHINATOWN ***




Produced by Alan Johns





TALES OF CHINATOWN

By Sax Rohmer

1916





CONTENTS

     THE DAUGHTER OF HUANG CHOW
     KERRY'S KID
     THE PIGTAIL OF HI WING HO
     THE HOUSE OF GOLDEN JOSS
     THE MAN WITH THE SHAVEN SKULL
     THE WHITE HAT
     TCHERIAPIN
     THE DANCE OF THE VEILS
     THE HAND OF THE MANDARIN QUONG
     THE KEY OF THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN





THE DAUGHTER OF HUANG CHOW






I

“DIAMOND FRED”



In the saloon bar of a public-house, situated only a few hundred yards
from the official frontier of Chinatown, two men sat at a small table
in a corner, engaged in earnest conversation. They afforded a sharp
contrast. One was a thick-set and rather ruffianly looking fellow, not
too cleanly in either person or clothing, and, amongst other evidences
that at one time he had known the prize ring, possessing a badly broken
nose. His companion was dressed with that spruceness which belongs to
the successful East End Jew; he was cleanly shaven, of slight build, and
alert in manner and address.

Having ordered and paid for two whiskies and sodas, the Jew, raising
his glass, nodded to his companion and took a drink. The glitter of
a magnificent diamond which he wore seemed to attract the other's
attention almost hypnotically.

“Cheerio, Freddy!” said the thick-set man. “Any news?”

“Nothing much,” returned the one addressed as Freddy, setting his glass
upon the table and selecting a cigarette from a packet which he carried
in his pocket.

“I'm not so sure,” growled the other, watching him suspiciously. “You've
been lying low for a long time, and it's not like you to slack off
except when there's something big in sight.”

“Hm!” said his companion, lighting his cigarette. “What do you mean
exactly?”

Jim Poland--for such was the big man's name--growled and spat
reflectively into a spittoon.

“I've had my eye on you, Freddy,” he replied; “I've had my eye on you!”

“Oh, have you?” murmured the other. “But tell me what you mean!”

Beneath his suave manner lay a threat, and, indeed, Freddy Cohen, known
to his associates as “Diamond Fred,” was in many ways a formidable
personality. He had brought to his chosen profession of crook a
first-rate American training, together with all that mental agility and
cleverness which belong to his race, and was at once an object of envy
and admiration amongst the fraternity which keeps Scotland Yard busy.

Jim Poland, physically a more dangerous character, was not in the same
class with him; but he was not without brains of a sort, and Cohen,
although smiling agreeably, waited with some anxiety for his reply.

“I mean,” growled Poland, “that you're not wasting your time with Lala
Huang for nothing.”

“Perhaps not,” returned Cohen lightly. “She's a pretty girl; but what
business is it of yours?”

“None at all. I ain't interested in 'er good looks; neither are you.”

Cohen shrugged and raised his glass again.

“Come on,” growled Poland, leaning across the table. “I know, and I'm in
on it. D'ye hear me? I'm in on it. These are hard times, and we've got
to stick together.”

“Oh,” said Cohen, “that's the game, is it?”

“That's the game right enough. You won't go wrong if you bring me in,
even at fifty-fifty, because maybe I know things about old Huang that
you don't know.”

The Jew's expression changed subtly, and beneath his drooping lids he
glanced aside at the speaker. Then:

“It's no promise,” he said, “but what do you know?”

Poland bent farther over the table.

“Chinatown's being watched again. I heard this morning that Red Kerry
was down here.”

Cohen laughed.

“Red Kerry!” he echoed. “Red Kerry means nothing in my young life, Jim.”

“Don't 'e?” returned Jim, snarling viciously. “The way he cleaned up
that dope crowd awhile back seemed to show he was no jug, didn't it?”

The Jew made a facial gesture as if to dismiss the subject.

“All right,” continued Poland. “Think that way if you like. But the
patrols have been doubled. I suppose you know that? And it's a cert
there are special men on duty, ever since the death of that Chink.”

Cohen shifted uneasily, glancing about him in a furtive fashion.

“See what I mean?” continued the other. “Chinatown ain't healthy just
now.”

He finished his whisky at a draught, and, standing up, lurched heavily
across to the counter. He returned with two more glasses. Then,
reseating himself and bending forward again:

“There's one thing I reckon you don't know,” he whispered in Cohen's
ear. “I saw that Chink talking to Lala Huang only a week before the time
he was hauled out of Limehouse Reach. I'm wondering, Diamond, if, with
all your cleverness, you may not go the same way.”

“Don't try to pull the creep stuff on me, Jim,” said Cohen uneasily.
“What are you driving at, anyway?”

“Well,” replied Poland, sipping his whisky reflectively, “how did that
Chink get into the river?”

“How the devil do I know?”

“And what killed him? It wasn't drowning, although he was all swelled
up.”

“See here, old pal,” said Cohen. “I know 'Frisco better than you know
Limehouse. Let me tell you that this little old Chinatown of yours is
pie to me. You're trying to get me figuring on Chinese death traps,
secret poisons, and all that junk. Boy, you're wasting your poetry.
Even if you did see the Chink with Lala, and I doubt it--Oh, don't
get excited, I'm speaking plain--there's no connection that I can see
between the death of said Chink and old Huang Chow.”

“Ain't there?” growled Poland huskily. He grasped the other's wrist as
in a vise and bent forward so that his battered face was close to the
pale countenance of the Jew. “I've been covering old Huang for months
and months. Now I'm going to tell you something. Since the death of that
Chink Red Kerry's been covering him, too.”

“See here!” Cohen withdrew his arm from the other's grasp angrily. “You
can't freeze me out of this claim with bogey stuff. You're listed, my
lad, and you know it. Chief Inspector Kerry is your pet nightmare.
But if he walked in here right now I could ask him to have a drink. I
wouldn't but I could. You've got the wrong angle, Jim. Lala likes me
fine, and although she doesn't say much, what she does say is straight.
I'll ask her to-night about the Chink.”

“Then you'll be a damned fool.”

“What's that?”

“I say you'll be a damned fool. I'm warning you, Freddy. There are
Chinks and Chinks. All the boys know old Huang Chow has got a regular
gold mine buried somewhere under the floor. But all the boys don't know
what I know, and it seems that you don't either.”

“What is that?”

Jim Poland bent forward more urgently, again seizing Cohen's wrist, and:

“Huang Chow is a mighty big bug amongst the Chinese,” he whispered,
glancing cautiously about him. “He's hellish clever and rotten with
money. A man like that wants handling. I'm not telling you what I know.
But call it fifty-fifty and maybe you'll come out alive.”

The brow of Diamond Fred displayed beads of perspiration, and with
a blue silk handkerchief which he carried in his breast pocket he
delicately dried his forehead.

“You're an old hand at this stuff, Jim,” he muttered. “It amounts to
this, I suppose; that if I don't agree you'll queer my game?”

Jim Poland's brow lowered and he clenched his fists formidably. Then:

“Listen,” he said in his hoarse voice. “It ain't your claim any more
than mine. You've covered it different, that's all. Yours was always the
petticoat lay. Mine's slower but safer. Is anyone else in with you?”

“No.”

“Then we'll double up. Now I'll tell you something. I was backing out.”

“What? You were going to quit?”

“I was.”

“Why?”

“Because the thing's too dead easy, and a thing like that always looks
like hell to me.”

Freddy Cohen finished his glass of whisky.

“Wait while I get some more drinks,” he said.

In this way, then, at about the hour of ten on a stuffy autumn night, in
the crowded bar of that Wapping public-house, these two made a
compact; and of its outcome and of the next appearance of Cohen, the
Jewish-American cracksman, within the ken of man, I shall now proceed to
tell.




II

THE END OF COHEN



“I've been expecting this,” said Chief Inspector Kerry. He tilted his
bowler hat farther forward over his brow and contemplated the ghastly
exhibit which lay upon the slab of the mortuary. Two other police
officers--one in uniform--were present, and they treated the celebrated
Chief Inspector with the deference which he had not only earned but had
always demanded from his subordinates.

Earmarked for important promotion, he was an interesting figure as
he stood there in the gloomy, ill-lighted place, his pose that of an
athlete about to perform a long jump, or perhaps, as it might have
appeared to some, that of a dancing-master about to demonstrate a new
step.

His close-cropped hair was brilliantly red, and so was his short, wiry,
aggressive moustache. He was ruddy of complexion, and he looked out
unblinkingly upon the world with a pair of steel-blue eyes. Neat he
was to spruceness, and while of no more than medium height he had the
shoulders of an acrobat.

The detective who stood beside him, by name John Durham, had one trait
in common with his celebrated superior. This was a quick keenness, a
sort of alert vitality, which showed in his eyes, and indeed in every
line of his thin, clean-shaven face. Kerry had picked him out as the
most promising junior in his department.

“Give me the particulars,” said the Chief Inspector. “It isn't robbery.
He's wearing a diamond ring worth two hundred pounds.”

His diction was rapid and terse--so rapid as to create the impression
that he bit off the ends of the longer words. He turned his fierce blue
eyes upon the uniformed officer who stood at the end of the slab.

“They are very few, Chief Inspector,” was the reply. “He was hauled
out by the river police shortly after midnight, at the lower end of
Limehouse Reach. He was alive then--they heard his cry--but he died
while they were hauling him into the boat.”

“Any statement?” rapped Kerry.

“He was past it, Chief Inspector. According to the report of the officer
in charge, he mumbled something which sounded like: 'It has bitten me,'
just before he became unconscious.”

“'It has bitten me,'” murmured Kerry. “The divisional surgeon has seen
him?”

“Yes, Chief Inspector. And in his opinion the man did not die from
drowning, but from some form of virulent poisoning.”

“Poisoning?”

“That's the idea. There will be a further examination, of course. Either
a hypodermic injection or a bite.”

“A bite?” said Kerry. “The bite of what?”

“That I cannot say, Chief Inspector. A venomous reptile, I suppose.”

Kerry stared down critically at the swollen face of the victim, and then
glanced sharply aside at Durham.

“Accounts for his appearance, I suppose,” he murmured.

“Yes,” said Durham quietly. “He hadn't been in the water long enough to
look like that.” He turned to the local officer. “Is there any theory as
to the point at which he went in?”

“Well, an arrest has been made.”

“By whom? of whom?” rapped Kerry.

“Two constables patrolling the Chinatown area arrested a man for
suspicious loitering. He turned out to be a well-known criminal--Jim
Poland, with a whole list of convictions against him. They're holding
him at Limehouse Station, and the theory is that he was operating
with------” He nodded in the direction of the body.

“Then who's the smart with the swollen face?” inquired Kerry. “He's a
new one on me.”

“Yes, but he's been identified by one of the K Division men. He is an
American crook with a clean slate, so far as this side is concerned.
Cohen is his name. And the idea seems to be that he went in at some
point between where he was found by the river police and the point at
which Jim Poland was arrested.”

Kerry snapped his teeth together audibly, and:

“I'm open to learn,” he said, “that the house of Huang Chow is within
that area.”

“It is.”

“I thought so. He died the same way the Chinaman died awhile ago,”
 snapped Kerry savagely.

“It looks very queer.” He glanced aside at the local officer. “Cover him
up,” he ordered, and, turning, he walked briskly out of the mortuary,
followed by Detective Durham.

Although dawn was not far off, this was the darkest hour of the night,
so that even the sounds of dockland were muted and the riverside slept
as deeply as the great port of London ever sleeps. Vague murmurings
there were and distant clankings, with the hum of machinery which is
never still.

Few of London's millions were awake at that hour, yet Scotland Yard
was awake in the person of the fierce-eyed Chief Inspector and his
subordinate. Perhaps those who lightly criticize the Metropolitan Force
might have learned a new respect for the tireless vigilance which keeps
London clean and wholesome, had they witnessed this scene on the borders
of Limehouse, as Kerry, stepping into a waiting taxi-cab accompanied by
Durham, proceeded to Limehouse Police Station in that still hour when
the City slept.

The arrival of Kerry created something of a stir amongst the officials
on duty. His reputation in these days was at least as great as that of
the most garrulous Labour member.

The prisoner was in cells, but the Chief Inspector elected to interview
him in the office; and accordingly, while the officer in charge sat at
an extremely tidy writing-table, tapping the blotting-pad with a pencil,
and Detective John Durham stood beside him, Kerry paced up and down the
little room, deep in reflection, until the door opened and the prisoner
was brought in.

One swift glance the Chief Inspector gave at the battle-scarred face,
and recognized instantly that this was a badly frightened man. Crossing
to the table he took up a typewritten slip which lay there, and:

“Your name is James Poland?” he said. “Four convictions; one, robbery
with violence.”

Jim Poland nodded sullenly.

“You were arrested at the corner of Pekin Street about midnight. What
were you doing there?”

“Taking a walk.”

“I'll say it again,” rapped Kerry, fixing his fierce eyes upon the man's
face. “What were you doing there?”

“I've told you.”

“And I tell you you're a liar. Where did you leave the man Cohen?”

Poland blinked his small eyes, cleared his throat, and looked down at
the floor uneasily. Then:

“Who's Cohen?” he grunted.

“You mean, who was Cohen?” cried Kerry.

The shot went home. The man clenched his fists and looked about the room
from face to face.

“You don't tell me------” he began huskily.

“I've told you,” said Kerry. “He's on the slab. Spit out the truth;
it'll be good for your health.”

The man hesitated, then looked up, his eyes half closed and a cunning
expression upon his face.

“Make out your own case,” he said. “You've got nothing against me.”

Kerry snapped his teeth together viciously.

“I've told you what happened to your pal,” he warned. “If you're a wise
man you'll come in on our side, before the same thing happens to you.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” growled Poland.

Kerry nodded to the constable at the doorway.

“Take him back,” he ordered.

Jim Poland being returned to his cell, Kerry, as the door closed behind
the prisoner and his guard, stared across at Durham where he stood
beside the table.

“An old hand,” he said. “But there's another way.” He glanced at the
officer in charge. “Hold him till the morning. He'll prove useful.”

From his waistcoat pocket he took out a slip of chewing gum, unwrapped
it, and placed the mint-flavoured wafer between his large white teeth.
He bit upon it savagely, settled his hat upon his head, and, turning,
walked toward the door. In the doorway he paused.

“Come with me, Durham,” he said. “I am leaving the conduct of the case
entirely in your hands from now onward.”

Detective Durham looked surprised and not a little anxious.

“I am doing so for two reasons,” continued the Chief Inspector. “These
two reasons I shall now explain.”




III

THE SECRET TREASURE-HOUSE



Unlike its sister colony in New York, there are no show places in
Limehouse. The visitor sees nothing but mean streets and dark doorways.
The superficial inquirer comes away convinced that the romance of the
Asiatic district has no existence outside the imaginations of writers
of fiction. Yet here lies a secret quarter, as secret and as strange,
in its smaller way, as its parent in China which is called the Purple
Forbidden City.

On a morning when mist lay over the Thames reaches, softening the
harshness of the dock buildings and lending an air of mystery to the
vessels stealing out upon the tide, a man walked briskly along Limehouse
Causeway, looking about him inquiringly, as one unfamiliar with the
neighbourhood. Presently he seemed to recognize a turning to the right,
and he pursued this for a time, now walking more slowly.

A European woman, holding a half-caste baby in her arms, stood in an
open doorway, watching him uninterestedly. Otherwise, except for one
neatly dressed young Chinaman, who passed him about halfway along the
street, there was nothing which could have told the visitor that he
had crossed the borderline dividing West from East and was now in an
Oriental town.

A very narrow alleyway between two dingy houses proved to be the spot
for which he was looking; and, having stared about him for a while, he
entered this alleyway. At the farther end it was crossed T-fashion, by
another alley, the only object of interest being an iron post at the
crossing, and the scenery being made up entirely of hideous brick walls.

About halfway along on the left, set in one of these walls, were strong
wooden gates, apparently those of a warehouse. Beside them was a door
approached by two very dirty steps. There was a bell-push near the door,
but upon neither of these entrances was there any plate to indicate the
name of the proprietor of the establishment.

From his pocket-book the visitor extracted a card, consulted something
written upon it, and then pressed the bell.

It was very quiet in this dingy little court. No sound of the busy
thoroughfares penetrated here; and although the passage forming the
top of the “T” practically marked the river bank, only dimly could one
discern the sounds which belong to a seaport.

Presently the door was opened by a Chinese boy who wore the ordinary
native working dress, and who regarded the man upon the step with
oblique, tired-looking eyes.

“Mr. Huang Chow?” asked the caller.

The boy nodded.

“You wantchee him see?”

“If he is at home.”

The boy glanced at the card, which the visitor still held between finger
and thumb, and extended his hand silently. The card was surrendered. It
was that of an antique dealer of Dover Street, Piccadilly, and written
upon the back was the following: “Mr. Hampden would like to do business
with you.” The signature of the dealer followed.

The boy turned and passed along a dim and perfectly unfurnished passage
which the opening of the door had revealed, while Mr. Hampden stood upon
the step and lighted a cigarette.

In less than a minute the boy returned and beckoned to him to come in.
As he did so, and the door was closed, he almost stumbled, so dark was
the passage.

Presently, guided by the boy, he found himself in a very business-like
little office, where a girl sat at an American desk, looking up at him
inquiringly.

She was of a dark and arresting type. Without being pretty in the
European sense, there was something appealing in her fine, dark eyes,
and she possessed the inviting smile which is the heritage of Eastern
women. Her dress was not unlike that of any other business girl, except
that the neck of her blouse was cut very low, a fashion affected by many
Eurasians, and she wore a gaily coloured sash, and large and very costly
pearl ear-rings. As Mr. Hampden paused in the doorway:

“Good morning,” said the girl, glancing down at the card which lay upon
the desk before her. “You come from Mr. Isaacs, eh?”

She looked at him with a caressing glance from beneath half-lowered
lashes, but missed no detail of his appearance. She did not quite like
his moustache, and thought that he would have looked better cleanshaven.
Nevertheless, he was a well-set-up fellow, and her manner evidenced
approval.

“Yes,” he replied, smiling genially. “I have a small commission to
execute, and I am told that you can help me.”

The girl paused for a moment, and then:

“Yes, very likely,” she said, speaking good English but with an odd
intonation. “It is not jade? We have very little jade.”

“No, no. I wanted an enamelled casket.”

“What kind?”

“Cloisonne.”

“Cloisonne? Yes, we have several.”

She pressed a bell, and, glancing up at the boy who had stood throughout
the interview at the visitor's elbow, addressed him rapidly in Chinese.
He nodded his head and led the way through a second doorway. Closing
this, he opened a third and ushered Mr. Hampden into a room which nearly
caused the latter to gasp with astonishment.

One who had blundered from Whitechapel into the Khan Khalil, who had
been transported upon a magic carpet from a tube station to the Taj
Mahal, or dropped suddenly upon Lebanon hills to find himself looking
down upon the pearly domes and jewelled gardens of Damascus, could not
well have been more surprised. This great treasure-house of old Huang
Chow was one of Chinatown's secrets--a secret shared only by those whose
commercial interests were identical with the interests of Huang Chow.

The place was artificially lighted by lamps which themselves were
beautiful objects of art, and which swung from the massive beams of
the ceiling. The floor of the warehouse, which was partly of stone, was
covered with thick matting, and spread upon it were rugs and carpets
of Karadagh, Kermanshah, Sultan-abad, and Khorassan, with lesser-known
loomings of almost equal beauty. Skins of rare beasts overlay the
divans. Furniture of ivory, of ebony and lemonwood, preciously inlaid,
gave to the place an air of cunning confusion. There were tall cabinets,
there were caskets and chests of exquisite lacquer and enamel, loot
of an emperor's palace; robes heavy with gold; slippers studded with
jewels; strange carven ivories; glittering weapons; pots, jars, and
bowls, as delicate and as fragile as the petals of a lily.

Last, but not least, sitting cross-legged upon a low couch, was old
Huang Chow, smoking a great curved pipe, and peering half blindly across
the place through large horn-rimmed spectacles. This couch was set
immediately beside a wide ascending staircase, richly carpeted, and
on the other side of the staircase, in a corresponding recess, upon a
gilded trestle carved to represent the four claws of a dragon, rested
perhaps the strangest exhibit of that strange collection--a Chinese
coffin of exquisite workmanship.

The boy retired, and Mr. Hampden found himself alone with Huang Chow. No
word had been exchanged between master and servant, but:

“Good morning, Mr. Hampden,” said the Chinaman in a high, thin voice.
“Please be seated. It is from Mr. Isaacs you come?”




IV

PERSONAL REPORT OF DETECTIVE JOHN DURHAM TO CHIEF INSPECTOR KERRY,
OFFICER IN CHARGE OF LIMEHOUSE INQUIRY



Dear Chief Inspector,--Following your instructions I returned and
interviewed the prisoner Poland in his cell. I took the line which
you had suggested, pointing out to him that he had nothing to gain and
everything to lose by keeping silent.

“Answer my questions,” I said, “and you can walk straight out.
Otherwise, you'll be up before the magistrate, and on your record alone
it will mean a holiday which you probably don't want.”

He was very truculent, but I got him in a good humour at last, and he
admitted that he had been cooperating with the dead man, Cohen, in an
attempt to burgle the house of Huang Chow. His reluctance to go into
details seemed to be due rather to fear of Huang Chow than to fear of
the law, and I presently gathered that he regarded Huang as responsible
for the death not only of Cohen, but also of the Chinaman who was
hauled out of the river about three weeks ago, as you well remember. The
post-mortem showed that he had died of some kind of poisoning, and when
we saw Cohen in the mortuary, his swollen appearance struck me as being
very similar to that of the Chinaman. (See my report dated 31st ultimo.)

He finally agreed to talk if I would promise that he should not be
charged and that his name should never be mentioned to anyone in
connection with what he might tell me. I promised him that outside the
ordinary official routine I would respect his request, and he told me
some very curious things, which no doubt have a bearing on the case.

For instance, he had discovered--I don't know in what way--that the dead
Chinaman, whose name was Pi Lung, had been in negotiation with Huang
Chow for some sort of job in his warehouse. Poland had seen the man
talking to Huang's daughter, at the end of the alley which leads to the
place. He seemed to attach extraordinary importance to this fact. At
last:

“I'll tell you what it is,” he said. “That Chink was a stranger to
Limehouse; I can swear to it. He was a gent of his hands; I reckon
they've got 'em in China as well as here. He went out for the old boy's
money-box, and finished like Cohen finished.”

“Make your meaning clearer,” I said.

“My meaning's this: Old Huang Chow is the biggest dealer in stolen and
smuggled valuables from overseas we've got in London. He's something
else as well; he's a big swell in China. But here's the point. He's
got business with buyers all over London, and they have to pay cash--no
checks. He doesn't bank it: I've proved that. He's got it in gold, or
diamonds, or something, being wise to present conditions, hidden there
in the house. Pi Lung was after his hoard. He didn't get it. Cohen and
me was after it. Where's Cohen?”

I agreed that it looked very suspicious, and presently:

“When I went in with Cohen,” continued Poland, “I knew one thing
he didn't know--a short cut into the warehouse. He's been playing
pretty-like with Lala, old Huang's daughter, and it's my belief that
he knew where the store was hidden; but he never told me. We knew there
were special men on duty, and we'd arranged that I was to give a signal
when the patrol had passed. Cohen all the time had planned to double on
me. While I was watching down on the Causeway end he climbed up and got
in through the skylight I'd shown him. When I got there he was missing,
but the skylight was open. I started off after him.”

Then Poland clutched me, and his fright was very real.

“I heard a shriek like nothing I ever heard in my life. I saw a light
shine through the trap, and then I heard a sort of moaning. Last, I
heard a bang, and the light went out. I staggered down the passage half
silly, started to run, and ran straight into the arms of two coppers.”

This evidence I thought was conclusive, and in accordance with your
instructions I proceeded to Mr. Isaacs in Dover Street. He didn't seem
too pleased at my suggestion, but when I pointed out to him that one
good turn deserved another, he agreed to give me an introduction to
Huang Chow.

I adopted a very simple disguise, just altering my complexion and
sticking on a moustache with spirit gum, hair by hair, and trimming it
down military fashion. Everything ran smoothly, and I seemed to make a
fairly favourable impression upon Lala Huang, the Chinaman's daughter,
who evidently interviews prospective customers before they are admitted
to the warehouse.

She is a Eurasian and extremely good looking. But when I found myself
in the room where old Huang keeps his treasures, I really thought I was
dreaming. It's a collection that must be worth thousands. He showed me
snuff-bottles, cut out of gems, and with a little opening no bigger than
the hole in a pipe-stem, but with wonderful paintings done inside the
bottles. He'd got a model of a pagoda made out of human teeth, and a big
golden rug woven from the hair of Circassian slave girls. Excuse this,
Chief Inspector; I know it is what you call the romantic stuff; but I
think it would have impressed you if you had seen it.

Anyway, I bought a little enamelled box, in accordance with Mr. Isaacs's
instructions, although whether I succeeded in convincing Huang Chow that
I knew anything about the matter is more than doubtful. He got up from
a sort of throne he sits on, and led the way up a broad staircase to a
private room above.

“Of course, you have brought the cash, Mr. Hampden?” he said.

He speaks quite faultless English. He walked up three steps to a sort of
raised writing-table in this upstairs room, and I counted out the
money to him. When he sat at the table he faced toward the room, and I
couldn't help thinking that, in his horn-rimmed spectacles, he looked
like some old magistrate. He explained that he would pack the purchase
for me, but that I must personally take it away. And:

“You understand,” said he, “that you bought it from a gentleman who had
purchased it abroad.”

I said I quite understood. He bowed me out very politely, and presently
I found myself back in the office with Lala Huang.

She seemed quite disposed to talk, and I chatted with her while the box
was being packed for me to take away. I knew I must make good use of my
time, but you have never given me a job I liked less. I mean, there
is something very appealing about her, and I hated to think that I was
playing a double game. However, without actually agreeing to see me
again, she told me enough to enable me to meet her “accidentally,” if I
wanted to. Therefore, I am going to look out for her this evening, and
probably take her to a picture palace, or somewhere where we can have a
quiet talk. She seems to be fancy free, and for some reason I feel sorry
for the girl. I don't altogether like the job, but I hope to justify
your faith in me, Chief.

I will prepare my official report this evening when I return.

Yours obediently,--JOHN DURHAM.




V

LALA HUANG



“No,” said Lala Huang, “I don't like London--not this part of London.”

“Where would you rather be?” asked Durham. “In China?”

Dusk had dropped its merciful curtain over Limehouse, and as the two
paced slowly along West India Dock Road it seemed to the detective that
a sort of glamour had crept into the scene.

He was a clever man within his limitations, and cultured up to a point;
but he was not philosopher enough to know that he viewed the purlieus
of Limehouse through a haze of Oriental mystery conjured up by the
conversation of his companion. Temple bells there were in the clangour
of the road cars. The smoke-stacks had a semblance of pagodas. Burma she
had conjured up before him, and China, and the soft islands where she
had first seen the light. For as well as a streak of European, there
was Kanaka blood in Lala, which lent her an appeal quite new to Durham,
insidious and therefore dangerous.

“Not China,” she replied. “Somehow I don't think I shall ever see China
again. But my father is rich, and it is dreadful to think that we live
here when there are so many more beautiful places to live in.”

“Then why does he stay?” asked Durham with curiosity.

“For money, always for money,” answered Lala, shrugging her shoulders.
“Yet if it is not to bring happiness, what good is it?”

“What good indeed?” murmured Durham.

“There is no fun for me,” said the girl pathetically. “Sometimes someone
nice comes to do business, but mostly they are Jews, Jews, always Jews,
and------” Again she shrugged eloquently.

Durham perceived the very opening for which he had been seeking..

“You evidently don't like Jews,” he said endeavouring to speak lightly.

“No,” murmured the girl, “I don't think I do. Some are nice, though. I
think it is the same with every kind of people--there are good and bad.”

“Were you ever in America?” asked Durham.

“No.”

“I was just thinking,” he explained, “that I have known several American
Jews who were quite good fellows.”

“Yes?” said Lala, looking up at him naively, “I met one not long ago. He
was not nice at all.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Durham, startled by this admission, which he had not
anticipated. “One of your father's customers?”

“Yes, a man named Cohen.”

“Cohen?”

“A funny little chap,” continued the girl. “He tried to make love
to me.” She lowered her lashes roguishly. “I knew all along he was
pretending. He was a thief, I think. I was afraid of him.”

Durham did some rapid thinking, then:

“Did you say his name was Cohen?” he asked.

“That was the name he gave.”

“A man named Cohen, an American, was found dead in the river quite
recently.”

Lala stopped dead and clutched his arm.

“How do you know?” she demanded.

“There was a paragraph in this morning's paper.”

She hesitated, then:

“Did it describe him?” she asked.

“No,” replied Durham, “I don't think it did in detail. At least, the
only part of the description which I remember is that he wore a large
and valuable diamond on his left hand.”

“Oh!” whispered Lala.

She released her grip of Durham's arm and went on.

“What?” he asked. “Did you think it was someone you knew?”

“I did know him,” she replied simply. “The man who was found drowned. It
is the same. I am sure now, because of the diamond ring. What paper did
you read it in? I want to read it myself.”

“I'm afraid I can't remember. It was probably the Daily Mail.”

“Had he been drowned?”

“I presume so--yes,” replied Durham guardedly.

Lala Huang was silent for some time while they paced on through the
dusk. Then:

“How strange!” she said in a low voice.

“I am sorry I mentioned it,” declared Durham. “But how was I to know it
was your friend?”

“He was no friend of mine,” returned the girl sharply. “I hated him. But
it is strange nevertheless. I am sure he intended to rob my father.”

“And is that why you think it strange?”

“Yes,” she said, but her voice was almost inaudible.

They were come now to the narrow street communicating with the courtway
in which the great treasure-house of Huang Chow was situated, and Lala
stopped at the corner.

“It was nice of you to walk along with me,” she said. “Do you live in
Limehouse?”

“No,” replied Durham, “I don't. As a matter of fact, I came down here
to-night in the hope of seeing you again.”

“Did you?”

The girl glanced up at him doubtfully, and his distaste for the task set
him by his superior increased with the passing of every moment. He was
a man of some imagination, a great reader, and ambitious professionally.
He appreciated the fact that Chief Inspector Kerry looked for great
things from him, but for this type of work he had little inclination.

There was too much chivalry in his make-up to enable him to play upon a
woman's sentiments, even in the interests of justice. By whatever means
the man Cohen had met his death, and whether or no the Chinaman Pi Lung
had died by the same hand, Lala Huang was innocent of any complicity in
these matters, he was perfectly well assured.

Doubts were to come later when he was away from her, when he had had
leisure to consider that she might regard him in the light of a third
potential rifler of her father's treasure-house. But at the moment,
looking down into her dark eyes, he reproached himself and wondered
where his true duty lay.

“It is so gray and dull and sordid here,” said the girl, looking down
the darkened street. “There is no one much to talk to.”

“But you have your business interests to keep you employed during the
day, after all.”

“I hate it all. I hate it all.”

“But you seem to have perfect freedom?”

“Yes. My mother, you see, was not Chinese.”

“But you wish to leave Limehouse?”

“I do. I do. Just now it is not so bad, but in the winter how I tire of
the gray skies, the endless drizzling rain. Oh!” She shrank back into
the shadow of a doorway, clutching at Durham's arm. “Don't let Ah Fu see
me.”

“Ah Fu? Who is Ah Fu?” asked Durham, also drawing back as a furtive
figure went slinking down the opposite side of the street.

“My father's servant. He let you in this morning.”

“And why must he not see you?”

“I don't trust him. I think he tells my father things.”

“What is it that he carries in his hand?”

“A birdcage, I expect.”

“A birdcage?”

“Yes!”

He caught the gleam of her eyes as she looked up at him out of the
shadow.

“Is he, then, a bird-fancier?”

“No, no, I can't explain because I don't understand myself. But Ah Fu
goes to a place in Shadwell regularly and buys young birds, always very
young ones and very little ones.”

“For what or for whom?”

“I don't know.”

“Have you an aviary in your house?”

“No.”

“Do you mean that they disappear, these purchases of Ah Fu's?”

“I often see him carrying a cage of young birds, but we have no birds in
the house.”

“How perfectly extraordinary!” muttered Durham.

“I distrust Ah Fu,” whispered the girl. “I am glad he did not see me
with you.”

“Young birds,” murmured Durham absently. “What kind of young birds? Any
particular breed?”

“No; canaries, linnets--all sorts. Isn't it funny?” The girl laughed in
a childish way. “And now I think Ah Fu will have gone in, so I must say
good night.”

But when presently Detective Durham found himself walking back along
West India Dock Road, his mind's eye was set upon the slinking figure of
a Chinaman carrying a birdcage.




VI

A HINT OF INCENSE



One Chinaman more or less does not make any very great difference to
the authorities responsible for maintaining law and order in Limehouse.
Asiatic settlers are at liberty to follow their national propensities,
and to knife one another within reason. This is wisdom. Such recreations
are allowed, if not encouraged, by all wise rulers of Eastern peoples.

“Found drowned,” too, is a verdict which has covered many a dark mystery
of old Thames, but “Found in the river, death having been due to the
action of some poison unknown,” is a finding which even in the case of a
Chinaman is calculated to stimulate the jaded official mind.

New Scotland Yard had given Durham a roving commission, and had been
justified in the fact that the second victim, and this time not a
Chinaman, had been found under almost identical conditions. The link
with the establishment of Huang Chow was incomplete, and Durham fully
recognized that it was up to him to make it sound and incontestable.

Jim Poland was not the only man in the East End who knew that the dead
Chinaman had been in negotiation with Huang Chow. Kerry knew it, and had
passed the information on to Durham.

Some mystery surrounded the life of the old dealer, who was said to be
a mandarin of high rank, but his exact association with the deaths first
of the Chinaman Pi Lung, and second of Cohen, remained to be proved.
Certain critics have declared the Metropolitan detective service to be
obsolete and inefficient. Kerry, as a potential superintendent, resented
these criticisms, and in his protege Durham, perceived a member of the
new generation who was likely in time to produce results calculated to
remove this stigma.

Durham recognized that a greater responsibility rested upon his
shoulders than the actual importance of the case might have indicated;
and now, proceeding warily along the deserted streets, he found his
brain to be extraordinarily active and his imagination very much alive.

There is a night life in Limehouse, as he had learned, but it is a mole
life, a subterranean life, of which no sign appears above ground after a
certain hour. Nevertheless, as he entered the area which harbours those
strange, hidden resorts the rumour of which has served to create the
glamour of Chinatown, he found himself to be thinking of the great
influence said to be wielded by Huang Chow, and wondering if unseen
spies watched his movements.

Lala was Oriental, and now, alone in the night, distrust leapt into
being within him. He had been attracted by her and had pitied her.
He told himself now that this was because of her dark beauty and the
essentially feminine appeal which she made. She was perhaps a vampire
of the most dangerous sort, one who lured men to strange deaths for some
sinister object beyond reach of a Western imagination.

He found himself doubting the success of those tactics upon which,
earlier in the day, he had congratulated himself. Perhaps beneath the
guise of Hampden, who bought antique furniture on commission, those
cunning old eyes beneath the horn-rimmed spectacles had perceived the
detective hidden, or at least had marked subterfuge.

While he could not count Lala a conquest--for he had not even
attempted to make love to her--the ease with which he had developed the
acquaintance now, afforded matter for suspicion.

At the entrance to the court communicating with the establishment of
Huang Chow he paused, looking cautiously about him. The men on the
Limehouse beats had been warned of the investigation afoot tonight, and
there was a plain-clothes man on point duty at no great distance away,
although carefully hidden, so that Durham had quite failed to detect his
presence.

Durham wore rough clothes and rubber-soled shoes; and now, as he entered
the court, he was thinking of the official report of the police sergeant
who, not so many hours before, had paid a visit to the house of Huang
Chow in order to question him respecting his knowledge of the dead man
Cohen, and to learn when last he had seen him.

Old Huang, who had received his caller in the large room upstairs, the
room which boasted the presence of the writing-dais, had exhibited no
trace of confusion, assuring the sergeant that he had not seen the
man Cohen for several days. Cohen had come to him with an American
introduction, which he, Huang, believed to be forged, and had wanted him
to undertake a shady agency, respecting the details of which he remained
peculiarly reticent. In short, nothing had been gained by this official
interrogation, and Huang blandly denied any knowledge of an attempted
burglary of his establishment.

“What have I to lose?” he had asked the inquirer. “A lot of old lumber
which I have accumulated during many years, and a reputation for being
wealthy, due to my lonely habits and to the ignorance of those who live
around me.”

Durham, mentally reviewing the words of the report, reconstructed the
scene in his mind; and now, having come to the end of the lane where
the iron post rested, he stood staring up at a place in the ancient wall
where several bricks had decayed, and where it was possible, according
to the statement of the man Poland, to climb up on to a piece of sloping
roof, and thence gain the skylight through which Cohen had obtained
admittance on the night of his death.

He made sure that his automatic pistol was in his pocket, questioned the
dull sounds of the riverside for a moment, looking about him anxiously,
and then, using the leaning post as a stepping-stone, he succeeded in
wedging his foot into a crevice in the wall. By the exercise of some
agility he scrambled up to the top, and presently found himself lying
upon a sloping roof.

The skylight remained well out of reach, but his rubber-soled shoes
enabled him to creep up the slates until he could grasp the framework
with his hands. Presently he found himself perched upon the trap which,
if his information could be relied upon, possessed no fastener, or
one so faulty that the trap could be raised by means of a brad-awl.
He carried one in his pocket, and, screwing it into the framework, he
lifted it cautiously, making very little noise.

The trap opened, and up to his nostrils there stole a queer, indefinable
odour, partly that which belongs to old Oriental furniture and stuffs,
but having mingled with it a hint of incense and of something else not
so easily named. He recognized the smell of that strange store-room,
which, as Mr. Hampden, he had recently visited.

For one moment he thought he could detect the distant note of a bell.
But, listening, he heard nothing, and was reassured.

He rested the trap back against the frame, and shone the ray of an
electric torch down into the darkness beneath him. The light fell upon
the top of a low carven table, dragon-legged and gilded. Upon it rested
the model pagoda constructed of human teeth, and there was something in
this discovery which made Durham feel inclined to shudder. However, the
impulse was only a passing one.

He measured the distance with his eye. The little table stood beside a
deep divan, and he saw that with care it would be possible to drop upon
this divan without making much noise. He calculated its exact position
before replacing the torch in his pocket, and then, resting back against
one side of the frame, he clutched the other with his hands. He wriggled
gradually down until further purchase became impossible. He then let
himself drop, and swung for a moment by his hands before releasing his
hold.

He fell, as he had calculated, upon the divan. It creaked ominously.
Catching his foot in the cushions, he stumbled and lay forward for a
moment upon his face, listening intently.

The room was very hot but nothing stirred.




VII

THE SCUFFLING SOUND



Detective Durham, as he lay there inhaling the peculiar perfume of the
place, recognized that he had put himself outside the pale of official
protection, and was become technically a burglar.

He wondered if Chief Inspector Kerry would have approved; but he had
outlined this plan of investigation for himself, and knew well that,
if it were crowned by success, the end would be regarded as having
justified the means. On the other hand, in the event of detention he
must personally bear the consequences of such irregular behaviour. He
knew well, however, that his celebrated superior had achieved promotion
by methods at least as irregular; and he knew that if he could but
obtain evidence to account for the death of the man Cohen, and of the
Chinaman Pi Lung, who had preceded him by the same mysterious path, the
way of his obtaining it would not be too closely questioned.

He was an ambitious man, and consequently one who took big chances.
Nothing disturbed the silence; he sat upon the divan and again pressed
the button of his torch, shining it all about the low-beamed apartment
and peering curiously into the weird shadows of the place. He calculated
he was now in the position which Cohen had occupied during the last
moments of his life, and a sense of the uncanny touched him coldly.

As he thought of the unnatural screams spoken of by Poland, some strange
instinct prompted him to curl up his feet upon the divan again, as
though a secret menace crawled upon the floor amid its many rugs and
carpets.

He must now endeavour to reconstruct the plan upon which the American
cracksman had operated. Poland had a persistent belief that Cohen had
known where the fabled hoard of Huang Chow was concealed.

Durham began a deliberate inspection of the place. He thought it
unlikely that a wily old Chinaman, assuming that he possessed hidden
wealth, would keep it in so accessible a spot as this. It was far more
probable that he had a fireproof safe in the room upstairs, perhaps
built into the wall. Yet, according to Poland's account, it was in this
room and not in any other that death came to Diamond Fred.

The wall-hangings first engaged Durham's attention. He moved them aside
systematically, one after another, seeking for any hiding-place, but
failing to find one. The door communicating with the outer office he
found to be locked, but he did not believe for a moment that the office
would be worthy of inspection.

There were cases containing jewelled weapons and cups and goblets inlaid
with precious stones, but none of these seemed to have been tampered
with, and all were locked, as was the big cabinet filled with snuff
bottles.

Many of the larger pieces about the place contained drawers and
cupboards, and these he systematically opened one after another, without
making any discovery of note. Some of the cupboards contained broken
pieces of crockery, and more or less damaged curios of one kind and
another, but none of them gave him the clue for which he was seeking.

He examined the couch upon which Huang Chow had been seated when first
he had met him, but although he searched it scientifically he was
rewarded by no discovery.

A very fusty and unpleasant smell was more noticeable at this point than
elsewhere in the room, and he found himself staring speculatively up
the wide, carpeted stairs. Next he turned his attention to the lacquered
coffin which occupied the corresponding recess to that filled by the
couch. It was an extraordinarily ornate piece of lacquer work and
probably of great value.

The lid appeared to be screwed on, and Durham stood staring at the
thing, half revolted and half fascinated. He failed to discover any
means of opening it, however, and when he tried to move it bodily found
it very heavy. He came to the conclusion that all the portable valuables
were contained in locked cases or cabinets, and out of this discovery
grew an idea.

The case containing the snuff bottles stood too close to the wall to
enable him to test his new theory, but a square case near the office
door, in which were five of six small but almost priceless pieces of
porcelain, afforded the very evidence for which he was looking.

Thin electric flex descended from somewhere inside the case down one
of the legs of the pedestal, and through a neatly drilled hole in the
floor, evidently placed there to accommodate it.

“Burglar alarm!” he muttered.

The opening of this case, and doubtless of any of the others, would
set alarm bells ringing. This was not an unimportant discovery, but it
brought him very little nearer to a solution of the chief problem which
engaged his mind. Assuming that Cohen had opened one of the cases and
had alarmed old Huang Chow, what steps had the latter taken to deal with
the intruder which had resulted in so ghastly a death? And how had he
disposed of the body?

As Durham stood there musing and looking down through the plate-glass at
the delicate porcelain beneath, a faint sound intruded itself upon the
stillness. It gave him another idea. Part of the floor was stone-paved,
but part was wood.

Upon a portion of the latter, where no carpet rested, Durham dropped
flat, pressing his ear to the floor.

A faint swishing and trickling sound was perceptible from some place
beneath.

“Ah!” he murmured.

Remembering that the premises almost overhung the Thames, he divined
that the cellars were flooded at high tide, or that there was some kind
of drain or cutting running underneath the house.

He stood up again, listening intently for any sound within the building.
He thought he had detected something, and now, as he stood there alert,
he heard it again--a faint scuffling, which might have been occasioned
by rats or even mice, but which, in some subtle and very unpleasant way,
did not suggest the movements of these familiar rodents.

Even as he perceived it, it ceased, leaving him wondering, and
uncomfortably conscious of a sudden dread of his surroundings. He
wondered in what part of this mysterious house Lala resided, and
recognizing that his departure must leave traces, he determined to
prosecute his inquiries as far as possible, since another opportunity
might not arise.

He was baffled but still hopeful. Something there was in the smell of
the place which threatened to unnerve him; or perhaps in its silence,
which remained quite unbroken save when, by acute listening, one
detected the dripping of water.

That unexplained scuffling sound, too, which he had failed to trace
or identify, lingered in his memory insistently, and for some reason
contained the elements of fear.

He crossed the room and began softly to mount the stair. It creaked only
slightly, and the door at the top proved to be ajar. He peeped in, to
find the place empty. It was a typical Chinese apartment, containing
very little furniture, the raised desk being the most noticeable item,
except for a small shrine which faced it on the other side of the room.

He mounted the steps to the desk and inspected a number of loose papers
which lay upon it. Without exception they were written in Chinese.
A sort of large, dull white blotting-pad lay upon the table, but its
surface was smooth and glossy.

Over it was suspended what looked like a lampshade, but on inspection it
proved to contain no lamp, but to communicate, by a sort of funnel, with
the ceiling above.

At this contrivance Durham stared long and curiously, but without coming
to any conclusion respecting its purpose. He might have investigated
further, but he became aware of a dull and regular sound in the room
behind him.

He turned in a flash, staring in the direction of two curtains draped
before what he supposed to be a door.

On tiptoe he crossed and gently drew the curtains aside.

He looked into a small, cell-like room, lighted by one window, where
upon a low bed Huang Chow lay sleeping peacefully!

Durham almost held his breath; then, withdrawing as quietly as he had
approached, he descended the stair. At the foot his attention was again
arrested by the faint scuffling sound. It ceased as suddenly as it
had begun, leaving him wondering and conscious anew of a chill of
apprehension.

He had already made his plans for departure, but knew that they must
leave evidence, when discovered, of his visit.

A large and solid table stood near the divan, and he moved this
immediately under the trap. Upon it he laid a leopard-skin to deaden
any noise he might make, and then upon the leopard-skin he set a massive
chair: he replaced his torch in his pocket and drew himself up on to the
roof again. Reclosing the trap by means of the awl which he had screwed
into it, he removed the awl and placed it in his pocket.

Then, sliding gently down the sloping roof, he dropped back into the
deserted court.




VIII

A CAGE OF BIRDS



“No,” said Lala, “we have never had robbers in the house.” She looked up
at Durham naively. “You are not a thief, are you?” she asked.

“No, I assure you I am not,” he answered, and felt himself flushing to
the roots of his hair.

They were seated in a teashop patronized by the workers of the district;
and as Durham, his elbows resting on the marble-topped table, looked
into the dark eyes of his companion, he told himself again that whatever
might be the secrets of old Huang Chow, his daughter did not share them.

The Chinaman had made no report to the authorities, although the piled
up furniture beneath the skylight must have afforded conclusive evidence
that a burglarious entry had been made into the premises.

“I should feel very nervous,” Durham declared, “with all those valuables
in the house.”

“I feel nervous about my father,” the girl answered in a low voice. “His
room opens out of the warehouse, but mine is shut away in another part
of the building. And Ah Fu sleeps behind the office.”

“Were you not afraid when you suspected that Cohen was a burglar? You
told me yourself that you did suspect him.”

“Yes, I spoke to my father about it.”

“And what did he say?”

“Oh”--she shrugged her shoulders--“he just smiled and told me not to
worry.”

“And that was the last you heard about the matter?”

“Yes, until you told me he was dead.”

Again he questioned the dark eyes and again was baffled. He felt
tempted, and not for the first time, to throw up the case. After all, it
rested upon very slender data--the mysterious death of a Chinaman
whose history was unknown and the story of a crook whose word was worth
nothing.

Finally he asked himself, as he had asked himself before, what did it
matter? If old Huang Chow had disposed of these people in some strange
manner, they had sought to rob him. The morality of the case was
complicated and obscure, and more and more he was falling under the
spell of Lala's dark eyes.

But always it was his professional pride which came to the rescue.
Murder had been done, whether justifiably or otherwise, and to him had
been entrusted the discovery of the murderer. It seemed that failure
was to be his lot, for if Lala knew anything she was a most consummate
actress, and if she did not, his last hope of information was gone.

He would have liked nothing better than to be rid of the affair,
provided he could throw up the case with a clear conscience. But when
presently he parted from the attractive Eurasian, and watched her slim
figure as, turning, she waved her hand and disappeared round a corner,
he knew that rest was not for him.

He had discovered the emporium of a Shadwell live-stock dealer with whom
Ah Fu had a standing order for newly fledged birds of all descriptions.
Purchases apparently were always made after dusk, and Ah Fu with his
birdcage was due that evening.

A scheme having suggested itself to Durham, he now proceeded to put it
into execution, so that when dusk came, and Ah Fu, carrying an empty
birdcage, set out from the house of Huang Chow, a very dirty-looking
loafer passed the corner of the street at about the time that the
Chinaman came slinking out.

Durham had mentally calculated that Ah Fu would be gone about half an
hour upon his mysterious errand, but the Chinaman travelled faster than
he had calculated.

Just as he was about to climb up once more on to the sloping roof,
he heard the pattering footsteps returning to the courtyard, although
rather less than twenty minutes had elapsed since the man had set out.

Durham darted round the corner and waited until he heard the door
closed; then, returning, he scrambled up on to the roof, creeping
forward until he was lying looking down through the skylight into the
darkened room below.

For ten minutes or more he waited, until he began to feel cramped and
uncomfortable. Then that happened which he had hoped and anticipated
would happen. The place beneath became illuminated, not fully, by means
of the hanging lamps, but dimly so that distorted shadows were cast
about the floor. Someone had entered carrying a lantern.

Durham's view-point limited his area of vision, but presently, as the
light came nearer and nearer, he discerned Ah Fu, carrying a lantern
in one hand and a birdcage in the other. He could hear nothing, for the
trap fitted well and the glass was thick. Moreover, it was very dirty.
He was afraid, however, to attempt to clean a space.

Ah Fu apparently had set the lantern upon a table, and into the radius
of its light there presently moved a stooping figure. Durham recognized
Huang Chow, and felt his heart beats increasing in rapidity.

Clutching the framework of the trap with his hands, he moved his head
cautiously, so that presently he was enabled to see the two Chinamen.
They were standing beside the lacquered coffin upon its dragon-legged
pedestal. Durham stifled an exclamation.

One end of the ornate sarcophagus had been opened in some way!

Now, to the watcher's unbounded astonishment, Ah Fu placed the birdcage
in the opening, and apparently reclosed the trap in the end of the
coffin. He made other manipulations with his bony yellow fingers, which
Durham failed to comprehend. Finally the birdcage was withdrawn again,
and as it was passed before the light of the lantern he saw that it was
empty, whereas previously it had contained a number of tiny birds all
huddled up together!

The light gleamed upon the spectacles of Huang Chow. Watching him,
Durham saw him take out from a hidden drawer in the pedestal a long,
slender key, insert it in a lock concealed by the ornate carving,
and then slightly raise the lid which had so recently defied his own
efforts.

He raised it only a few inches, and then, taking up the lantern, peered
into the interior of the coffin, at the same time waving his hand
in dismissal to Ah Fu. For a while he stood there, peering into the
interior, and then, lowering the lid again, he relocked this gruesome
receptacle and, lantern in hand, began to mount the stair.

Durham inhaled deeply. He realized that during the last few seconds he
had been holding his breath. Now, as he began to creep back down the
slope, he discovered that his hands were shaking.

He dropped down into the court again, and for several minutes leaned
against the wall, endeavouring to reason out an explanation of what he
had seen, and in a measure to regain his composure.

There was a horror underlying it all which he was half afraid to face.
But the real clue to the mystery still eluded him.

Whether what he had witnessed were some kind of obscene ceremony,
or whether an explanation more vile must be sought, he remained
undetermined. He must repeat his exploit, if possible, and once more
gain access to the room which contained the lacquer coffin.

But the adventure was very distasteful. He recollected the smell of the
place, and the memory brought with it a sense of nausea. He thought of
Lala Huang, and his ideas became grotesque and chaotic. Yet the solution
of the mystery lay at last within his grasp, and to the zest of the
investigator everything else became subjugated.

He walked slowly away, silent in his rubber-soled shoes.




IX

THE PICTURE ON THE PAD



Lala Huang lay listening to the vague sounds which disturbed the silence
of the night. Presently her thoughts made her sigh wearily. During the
lifetime of her mother, who had died while Lala was yet a little girl,
life had been different and so much brighter.

She imagined that in the mingled sounds of dock and river which came to
her she could hear the roar of surf upon a golden beach. The stuffy
air of Limehouse took on the hot fragrance of a tropic island, and she
sighed again, but this time rapturously, for in spirit she was a child
once more, lulled by the voice of the great Pacific.

Young as she was, the death of her mother had been a blow from which it
had taken her several years to recover. Then had commenced those
long travels with her father, from port to port, from ocean to ocean,
sometimes settling awhile, but ever moving onward, onward.

He had had her educated after a fashion, and his love for her she did
not doubt. But her mother's blood spoke more strongly than that part of
her which was Chinese, and there was softness and a delicious languor in
her nature which her father did not seem to understand, and of which he
did not appear to approve.

She knew that he was wealthy. She knew that his ways were not straight
ways, although that part of his business to which he had admitted her as
an assistant, and an able one, was legitimate enough, or so it seemed.

Consignments of goods arrived at strange hours of the night at
the establishment in Limehouse, and from this side of her father's
transactions she was barred. The big double doors opening on the little
courtyard would be opened by Ah Fu, and packing cases of varying sizes
be taken in. Sometimes the sounds of these activities would reach her in
her room in a distant part of the house; but only in the morning would
she recognize their significance, when in the warehouse she would
discover that some new and choice pieces had arrived.

She wondered with what object her father accumulated wealth, and hoped,
against the promptings of her common sense, that he designed to return
East, there to seek a retirement amidst the familiar and the beautiful
things of the Orient which belonged to Lala's dream of heaven.

Stories about her father often reached her ears. She knew that he
had held high rank in China before she had been born; but that he had
sacrificed his rights in some way had always been her theory. She had
been too young to understand the stories which her mother had told her
sometimes; but that there were traits in the character of Huang Chow
which it was not good for his daughter to know she appreciated and
accepted as a secret sorrow.

He allowed her all the freedom to which her education entitled her. Her
life was that of a European and not of an Oriental woman. She loved him
in a way, but also feared him. She feared the dark and cruel side of his
character, of which, at various periods during their life together, she
had had terrifying glimpses.

She had decided that cruelty was his vice. In what way he gratified
it she had never learned, nor did she desire to do so. There were
periodical visits from the police, but she had learned long ago that her
father was too clever to place himself within reach of the law.

However crooked one part of his business methods might be, his dealings
with his clients were straight enough, so that no one had any object in
betraying him; and the legality or otherwise of his foreign relations
evidently afforded no case against him upon which the authorities could
act, or upon which they cared to act.

In America it had been graft which had protected him. She had learned
this accidentally, but never knew whether he bought his immunity in the
same way in London.

Some of the rumours which reached her were terrifying. Latterly she had
met many strange glances in her comings and goings about Limehouse. This
peculiar atmosphere had always preceded the break-up of every home which
they had shared. She divined the fact that in some way Huang Chow
had outstayed his welcome in Chinatown, London. Where their next
resting-place would be she could not imagine, but she prayed that it
might be in some more sunny clime.

She found herself to be thinking over much of John Hampden. His bona
fides were not above suspicion, but she could scarcely expect to meet a
really white man in such an environment.

Lala would have liked to think that he was white, but could not force
herself to do so. She would have liked to think that he sought her
company because she appealed to him personally; but she had detected
the fact that another motive underlay his attentions. She wondered if he
could be another of those moths drawn by the light of that fabled wealth
of her father.

It was curious, she reflected, that Huang Chow never checked--indeed,
openly countenanced--her friendship with the many chance acquaintances
she had made, even when her own instincts told her that the men were
crooked; so that, knowing the acumen of her father, she was well aware
that he must know it too.

Several of these pseudo lovers of hers had died. It was a point which
often occurred to her mind, but upon which she did not care to dwell
even now. But John Hampden--John Hampden was different. He was not
wholly sincere. She sighed wearily. But nevertheless he was not like
some of the others.

She started up in bed, seized with a sudden dreadful idea. He was a
detective!

She understood now why she had found so much that was white in him,
but so much that was false. His presence seemed to be very near her.
Something caressing in his voice echoed in her mind. She found herself
to be listening to the muted sounds of Limehouse and of the waterway
which flowed so close beside her.

That old longing for the home of her childhood returned tenfold, and
tears began to trickle down her cheeks. She was falling in love with
this man whose object was her father's ruin. A cold terror clutched
at her heart. Even now, while their friendship was so new, so strange,
there was a query, a stark, terrifying query, to stand up before her.

If put to the test, which would she choose?

She was unable to face that issue, and dropped back upon her pillow,
stifling a sob.

Yes, he was a detective. In some way her father had at last attracted
the serious attention of the law. Rumours of this were flying round
Chinatown, to which she had not been entirely deaf. She thought of a
hundred questions, a hundred silences, and grew more and more convinced
of the truth.

What did he mean to do? Before her a ghostly company uprose--the shadows
of some she had known with designs upon her father. John Hampden's
design was different. But might he not join that mysterious company?

Now again she suddenly sprang upright, this time because of a definite
sound which had reached her ears from within the house: a very faint,
bell-like tinkling which ceased almost immediately. She had heard it one
night before, and quite recently; indeed, on the night before she had
met John Hampden. Cohen--Cohen, the Jew, had died that night!

She sprang lightly on to the floor, found her slippers, and threw a silk
kimono over her nightrobe. She tiptoed cautiously to the door and opened
it.

It was at this very moment that old Huang Chow, asleep in his cell-like
apartment, was aroused by the tinkling of a bell set immediately above
his head. He awoke instantly, raised his hand and stopped the bell.
His expression, could anyone have been present to see it, was a thing
unpleasant to behold. Triumph was in it, and cunning cruelty.

His long yellow fingers reached out for his hornrimmed spectacles
which lay upon a little table beside him. Adjusting them, he pulled the
curtains aside and shuffled silently across the large room.

Mounting the steps to the raised writing-table, he rested his elbows
upon it, and peered down at that curious blotting-pad which had so
provoked the curiosity of Durham. Could Durham have seen it now the
mystery must have been solved. It was an ingenious camera obscura
apparatus, and dimly depicted upon its surface appeared a reproduction
of part of the storehouse beneath! The part of it which was visible
was that touched by the light of an electric torch, carried by a man
crossing the floor in the direction of the lacquered coffin upon the
gilded pedestal!

Old Huang Chow chuckled silently, and his yellow fingers clutched the
table edge as he moved to peer more closely into the picture.

“Poor fool!” he whispered in Chinese. “Poor fool!”

It was the man who had come with the introduction from Mr. Isaacs--a new
impostor who sought to rob him, who sought to obtain information from
his daughter, who had examined his premises last night, and had even
penetrated upstairs, so that he, old Huang Chow, had been compelled to
disconnect the apparatus and to feign sleep under the scrutiny of the
intruder.

To-night it would be otherwise. To-night it would be otherwise.




X

THE LACQUERED COFFIN



Durham gently raised the trap in the roof of Huang Chow's
treasure-house. He was prepared for snares and pitfalls. No sane man, on
the evidence which he, Durham, had been compelled to leave behind, would
have neglected to fasten the skylight which so obviously afforded a
means of entrance into his premises.

Therefore, he was expected to return. The devilish mechanism was set
ready to receive him. But the artist within him demanded that he should
unmask the mystery with his own hands.

Moreover, he doubted that an official visit, even now, would yield any
results. Old Huang Chow was too cunning for that. If he was to learn how
the man Cohen had died, he must follow the same path to the bitter end.
But there were men on duty round the house, and he believed that he had
placed them so secretly as to deceive even this master of cunning with
whom he was dealing.

He repeated his exploit, dropping with a dull thud upon the cushioned
divan. Then, having lain there listening awhile, he pressed the button
of his torch, and, standing up, crept across the room in the direction
of the stairway.

Here he paused awhile, listening intently. The image of Lala Huang arose
before his mind's eye reproachfully, but he crushed the reproach, and
advanced until he stood beside the lacquered coffin.

He remembered where the key was hidden, and, stooping, he fumbled for a
while and then found it. He was acutely conscious of an unnameable fear.
He felt that he was watched, and yet was unwilling to believe it. The
musty and unpleasant smell which he had noticed before became extremely
perceptible.

He quietly sought for the hidden lock, and, presently finding it,
inserted the key, then paused awhile. He rested his torch upon the
cushions of the divan where the light shone directly upon the coffin.
Then, having his automatic in his left hand, he turned the key.

He had expected now to be able to raise the lid as he had seen Huang
Chow do; but the result was far more surprising.

The lid, together with a second framework of fine netting, flew open
with a resounding bang; and from the interior of the coffin uprose a
most abominable stench.

Durham started back a step, and as he did so witnessed a sight which
turned him sick with horror.

Out on to the edge of the coffin leapt the most gigantic spider which
he had ever seen in his life! It had a body as big as a man's fist, jet
black, with hairy legs like the legs of a crab and a span of a foot or
more!

A moment it poised there, while he swayed, sick with horror. Then,
unhesitatingly, it leapt for his face!

He groaned and fired, missed the horror, but diverted its leap, so that
it fell with a sickening thud a yard behind him. He turned, staggering
back towards the stair, and aware that a light had shone out from
somewhere.

A door had been opened only a few yards from where he stood, and there,
framed in the opening, was Lala Huang, her eyes wide with terror and her
gaze set upon him across the room.

“You!” she whispered. “You!”

“Go back!” he cried hoarsely. “Go back! Close the door. You don't
understand--close the door!”

Her gaze set wildly upon him, Lala staggered forward; stopped dead;
looked down at her bare ankle, and then, seeing the thing which had
fastened upon her, uttered a piercing shriek which rang throughout the
place.

At which moment the floor slid away beneath Durham, and he found himself
falling--falling--and then battling for life in evil-smelling water,
amidst absolute darkness.

Police whistles were skirling around the house of Huang Chow. As the
hidden men came running into the court:

“You heard the shot?” cried the sergeant in charge. “I warned him not to
go alone. Don't waste time on the door. One man stay on duty there; the
rest of you follow me.”

In a few moments, led by the sergeant, the party came dropping heavily
through the skylight into the treasure-house of Huang Chow, in which
every lamp was now alight. A trap was open near the foot of the stairs,
and from beneath it muffled cries proceeded. In this direction the
sergeant headed. Craning over the trap:

“Hallo, Mr. Durham!” he called. “Mr. Durham!”

“Get a rope and a ladder,” came a faint cry from below. “I can just
touch bottom with my feet and keep my head above water, but the tide's
coming in. Look to the girl, though, first. Look to the girl!”

The sergeant turned to where, stretched upon a tiger skin before a
half-open door, Lala Huang lay, scantily clothed and white as death.

Upon one of her bare ankles was a discoloured mark.

As the sergeant and another of the men stooped over her a moaning sound
drew their attention to the stair, and there, bent and tottering slowly
down, was old Huang Chow, his eyes peering through the owl-like glasses
vacantly across the room to where his daughter lay.

“My God!” whispered the sergeant, upon one knee beside her. He looked
blankly into the face of the other man. “She's dead!”

Two plain-clothes men were busy knotting together tapestries and pieces
of rare stuff with which to draw Durham out of the pit; but at these old
Huang Chow looked not at all, but gropingly crossed the room, as if he
saw imperfectly, or could not believe what he saw. At last he reached
the side of the dead girl, stooped, touched her, laid a trembling yellow
hand over her heart, and then stood up again, looking from face to face.

Ignoring the mingled activities about him, he crossed to the open coffin
and began to fumble amongst the putrefying mass of bones and webbing
which lay therein. Out from this he presently drew an iron coffer.

Carrying it across the room he opened the lid. It was full almost to
the top with uncut gems of every variety--diamonds, rubies, sapphires,
emeralds, topaz, amethysts, flashing greenly, redly, whitely. In
handfuls he grasped them and sprinkled them upon the body of the dead
girl.

“For you,” he crooned brokenly in Chinese. “They were all for you!”

The extemporized rope had just been lowered to Durham, when:

“My God!” cried the sergeant, looking over Huang Chow's shoulder.
“What's that?”

He had seen the giant spider, the horror from Surinam, which the
Chinaman had reared and fed to guard his treasure and to gratify his
lust for the strange and cruel. The insect, like everything else in
that house, was unusual, almost unique. It was one of the Black Soldier
spiders, by some regarded as a native myth, but actually existing in
Surinam and parts of Brazil. A member of the family, Mygale, its sting
was more quickly and certainly fatal than that of a rattle-snake. Its
instinct was fearlessly to attack any creature, great or small, which
disturbed it in its dark hiding-place.

Now, with feverish, horrible rapidity it was racing up the tapestries on
the other side of the room.

“Merciful God!” groaned the sergeant.

Snatching a revolver from his pocket he fired shot after shot. The third
hit the thing but did not kill it. It dropped back upon the floor and
began to crawl toward the coffin. The sergeant ran across and at close
quarters shot it again.

Red blood oozed out from the hideous black body and began to form a deep
stain upon the carpet.

When Durham, drenched but unhurt, was hauled back into the
treasure-house, he did not speak, but, scrambling into the room
stood--pallid--staring dully at old Huang Chow.

Huang Chow, upon his knees beside his daughter, was engaged in
sprinkling priceless jewels over her still body, and murmuring in
Chinese:

“For you, for you, Lala. They were all for you.”






KERRY'S KID






I

RED KERRY ON DUTY



Chief Inspector Kerry came down from the top of a motor-bus and stood on
the sidewalk for a while gazing to right and left along Piccadilly.
The night was humid and misty, now threatening fog and now rain. Many
travellers were abroad at this Christmas season, the pleasure seekers
easily to be distinguished from those whom business had detained in
town, and who hurried toward their various firesides. The theatres
were disgorging their audiences. Streams of lighted cars bore parties
supperward; less pretentious taxicabs formed links in the chain.

From the little huddled crowd of more economical theatre-goers who
waited at the stopping place of the motor-buses, Kerry detached himself,
walking slowly along westward and staring reflectively about him.
Opposite the corner of Bond Street he stood still, swinging his malacca
cane and gazing fixedly along this narrow bazaar street of the
Baghdad of the West. His trim, athletic figure was muffled in a big,
double-breasted, woolly overcoat, the collar turned up about his ears.
His neat bowler hat was tilted forward so as to shade the fierce blue
eyes. Indeed, in that imperfect light, little of the Chief Inspector's
countenance was visible except his large, gleaming white teeth, which he
constantly revealed in the act of industriously chewing mint gum.

He smiled as he chewed. Duty had called him out into the mist, and for
once he had obeyed reluctantly. That very afternoon had seen the return
of Dan Kerry, junior, home from school for the Christmas vacation, and
Dan was the apple of his father's eye.

Mrs. Kerry had reserved her dour Scottish comments upon the boy's school
report for a more seemly occasion than the first day of his holidays;
but Kerry had made no attempt to conceal his jubilation--almost immoral,
his wife had declared it to be--respecting the lad's athletic record.
His work on the junior left wing had gained the commendation of a
celebrated international; and Kerry, who had interviewed the gymnasium
instructor, had learned that Dan Junior bade fair to become an amateur
boxer of distinction.

“He is faster on his feet than any boy I ever handled,” the expert had
declared. “He hasn't got the weight behind it yet, of course, but he's
developing a left that's going to make history. I'm of opinion that
there isn't a boy in the seniors can take him on, and I'll say that he's
a credit to you.”

Those words had fallen more sweetly upon the ears of Chief Inspector
Kerry than any encomium of the boy's learning could have done. On the
purely scholastic side his report was not a good one, admittedly. “But,”
 murmured Kerry aloud, “he's going to be a man.”

He remembered that he had promised, despite the lateness of the hour, to
telephone the lad directly he had received a certain report, and to tell
him whether he might wait up for his return or whether he must turn in.
Kerry, stamping his small, neatly shod feet upon the pavement, smiled
agreeably. He was thinking of the telephone which recently he had had
installed in his house in Brixton. His wife had demanded this as a
Christmas box, pointing out how many uneasy hours she would be spared by
the installation. Kerry had consented cheerfully enough, for was he not
shortly to be promoted to the exalted post of a superintendent of the
Criminal Investigation Department?

These reflections were cheering and warming; and, waiting until a gap
occurred in the stream of cabs and cars, he crossed Piccadilly and
proceeded along Bond Street, swinging his shoulders in a manner which
would have enabled any constable in the force to recognize “Red Kerry”
 at a hundred yards.

The fierce eyes scrutinized the occupants of all the lighted cars. At
pedestrians also he stared curiously, and at another smaller group of
travellers waiting for the buses on the left-hand side of the street he
looked hard and long. He pursued his way, acknowledged the salutation
of a porter who stood outside the entrance to the Embassy Club, and
proceeded, glancing about him right and left and with some evident and
definite purpose.

A constable standing at the corner of Conduit Street touched his helmet
as Kerry passed and the light of an arc-lamp revealed the fierce red
face. The Chief Inspector stopped, turned, and:

“What the devil's the idea?” he demanded.

He snapped out the words in such fashion that the unfortunate constable
almost believed he could see sparks in the misty air.

“I'm sorry, sir, but recognizing you suddenly like, I----”

“You did?” the fierce voice interrupted. “How long in the force?”

“Six months, sir.”

“Never salute an officer in plain clothes.”

“I know, sir.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“I told you, sir.”

“Then tell me again.”

“I forgot.”

“You're paid to remember; bear it in mind.”

Kerry tucked his malacca under his arm and walked on, leaving the
unfortunate policeman literally stupefied by his first encounter with
the celebrated Chief Inspector.

Presently another line of cars proclaimed the entrance to a club, and
just before reaching the first of these Kerry paused. A man stood in a
shadowy doorway, and:

“Good evening, Chief Inspector,” he said quietly.

“Good evening, Durham. Anything to report?”

“Yes. Lou Chada is here again.”

“With whom?”

“Lady Rourke.”

Kerry stepped to the edge of the pavement and spat out a piece of
chewing-gum. From his overcoat pocket he drew a fresh piece, tore off
the pink wrapping and placed the gum between his teeth. Then:

“How long?” he demanded.

“Came to dinner. They are dancing.”

“H'm!” The Chief Inspector ranged himself beside the other detective in
the shadow of the doorway. “Something's brewing, Durham,” he said. “I
think I shall wait.”

His subordinate stared curiously but made no reply. He was not wholly
in his chief's confidence. He merely knew that the name of Lou Chada
to Kerry was like a red rag to a bull. The handsome, cultured young
Eurasian, fresh from a distinguished university career and pampered by a
certain section of smart society, did not conform to Detective Sergeant
Durham's idea of a suspect. He knew that Lou was the son of Zani Chada,
and he knew that Zani Chada was one of the wealthiest men in Limehouse.
But Lou had an expensive flat in George Street; Lou was courted by
society butterflies, and in what way he could be connected with the case
known as “the Limehouse inquiry,” Durham could not imagine.

That the open indiscretion of Lady “Pat” Rourke might lead to trouble
with her husband, was conceivable enough; but this was rather a matter
for underhand private inquiry than for the attention of the Criminal
Investigation Department of New Scotland Yard.

So mused Durham, standing cold and uncomfortable in the shadowy doorway,
and dreaming of a certain cosy fireside, a pair of carpet slippers and a
glass of hot toddy which awaited him. Suddenly:

“Great flames! Look!” he cried.

Kerry's fingers closed, steely, upon Durham's wrist. A porter was
urgently moving the parked cars farther along the street to enable one,
a French coupe, to draw up before the club entrance.

Two men came out, supporting between them a woman who seemed to be ill;
a slender, blonde woman whose pretty face was pale and whose wide-open
blue eyes stared strangely straight before her. The taller of her
escorts, while continuing to support her, solicitously wrapped her fur
cloak about her bare shoulders; the other, the manager of the club,
stepped forward and opened the door of the car.

“Lady Rourke!” whispered Durham.

“With Lou Chada!” rapped Kerry. “Run for a cab. Brisk. Don't waste a
second.”

Some little conversation ensued between manager and patron, then the
tall, handsome Eurasian, waving his hand protestingly, removed his hat
and stepped into the coupe beside Lady Rourke. It immediately moved away
in the direction of Piccadilly.

One glimpse Kerry had of the pretty, fair head lying limply back against
the cushions. The manager of the club was staring after the car.

Kerry stepped out from his hiding place. Durham had disappeared, and
there was no cab in sight, but immediately beyond the illuminated
entrance stood a Rolls-Royce which had been fifth in the rank of parked
cars before the adjustment had been made to enable the coupe to reach
the door. Kerry ran across, and:

“Whose car, my lad?” he demanded of the chauffeur.

The latter, resenting the curt tone of the inquiry, looked the speaker
up and down, and:

“Captain. Egerton's,” he replied slowly. “But what business may it be of
yours?”

“I'm Chief Inspector Kerry, of New Scotland Yard,” came the rapid reply.
“I want to follow the car that has just left.”

“What about running?” demanded the man insolently.

Kerry shot out a small, muscular hand and grasped the speaker's wrist.

“I'll say one thing to you,” he rapped. “I'm a police officer, and I
demand your help. Refuse it, and you'll wake up in Vine Street.”

The Chief Inspector was on the step now, bending forward so that his
fierce red face was but an inch removed from that of the startled
chauffeur. The quelling force of his ferocious personality achieved its
purpose, as it rarely failed to do.

“I'm getting in,” added the Chief Inspector, jumping back on to the
pavement. “Lose that French bus, and I'll charge you with resisting and
obstructing an officer of the law in the execution of his duty. Start.”

Kerry leaped in and banged the door--and the Rolls-Royce started.




II

AT MALAY JACK'S



When Kerry left Bond Street the mistiness of the night was developing
into definite fog. It varied in different districts. Thus, St. Paul's
Churchyard had been clear of it at a time when it had lain impenetrably
in Trafalgar Square. When, an hour and a half after setting out in the
commandeered Rolls-Royce, Kerry groped blindly along Limehouse Causeway,
it was through a yellow murk that he made his way--a vapour which could
not only be seen, smelled and felt, but tasted.

He was in one of his most violent humours. He found some slight solace
in the reflection that the impudent chauffeur, from whom he had parted
in West India Dock Road, must experience great difficulty in finding his
way back to the West End.

“Damn the fog!” he muttered, coughing irritably.

It had tricked him, this floating murk of London; for, while he had been
enabled to keep the coupe in view right to the fringe of dockland, here,
as if bred by old London's river, the fog had lain impenetrably.

Chief Inspector Kerry was a man who took many risks, but because of this
cursed fog he had no definite evidence that Chada's car had gone to a
certain house. Right of search he had not, and so temporarily he was
baffled.

Now the nearest telephone was his objective, and presently, where a blue
light dimly pierced the mist, he paused, pushed open a swing door, and
stepped into a long, narrow passage. He descended three stairs, and
entered a room laden with a sickly perfume compounded of stale beer and
spirits; of greasy humanity--European, Asiastic, and African; of cheap
tobacco and cheaper scents; and, vaguely, of opium.

It was fairly well lighted, but the fog had penetrated here, veiling
some of the harshness of its rough appointments. An unsavoury den was
Malay Jack's, where flotsam of the river might be found. Yellow men
there were, and black men and brown men. But all the women present were
white.

Fan-tan was in progress at one of the tables, the four players being
apparently the only strictly sober people in the room. A woman
was laughing raucously as Kerry entered, and many coarse-voiced
conversations were in progress; but as he pulled the rough curtain walls
aside and walked into the room, a hush, highly complimentary to the
Chief Inspector's reputation, fell upon the assembly. Only the woman's
raucous laughter continued, rising, a hideous solo, above a sort of
murmur, composed of the words “Red Kerry!” spoken in many tones.

Kerry ignored the sensation which his entrance had created, and crossed
the room to a small counter, behind which a dusky man was standing,
coatless and shirt sleeves rolled up. He had the skin of a Malay but
the features of a stage Irishman of the old school. And, indeed, had he
known his own pedigree, which is a knowledge beyond the ken of any man,
partly Irish he might have found himself indeed to be.

This was Malay Jack, the proprietor of one of the roughest houses in
Limehouse. His expression, while propitiatory, was not friendly, but:

“Don't get hot and bothered,” snapped Kerry viciously. “I want to use
your telephone, that's all.”

“Oh,” said the other, unable to conceal his relief, “that's easy. Come
in.”

He raised a flap in the counter, and Kerry, passing through, entered
a little room behind the bar. Here a telephone stood upon a dirty,
littered table, and, taking it up:

“City four hundred,” called the Chief Inspector curtly. A moment later:
“Hallo! Yes,” he said. “Chief Inspector Kerry speaking. Put me through
to my department, please.”

He stood for a while waiting, receiver in hand, and smiled grimly to
note that the uproar in the room beyond had been resumed. Evidently
Malay Jack had given the “all clear” signal. Then:

“Chief Inspector Kerry speaking,” he said again. “Has Detective Sergeant
Durham reported?”

“Yes,” was the reply, “half an hour ago. He's standing-by at Limehouse
Station. He followed you in a taxi, but lost you on the way owing to the
fog.”

“I don't wonder,” said Kerry. “His loss is not so great as mine.
Anything else?”

“Nothing else.”

“Good. I'll speak to Limehouse. Good-bye.”

He replaced the receiver and paused for a moment, reflecting. Extracting
a piece of tasteless gum from between his teeth, he deposited it in
the grate, where a sickly fire burned; then, tearing the wrapper from
a fresh slip, he resumed his chewing and stood looking about him
with unseeing eyes. Fierce they were as ever, but introspective in
expression.

Famous for his swift decisions, for once in a way he found himself in
doubt. Malay Jack had keen ears, and there were those in the place who
had every reason to be interested in the movements of a member of the
Criminal Investigation Department, especially of one who had earned the
right to be dreaded by the rats of Limehouse. London's peculiar climate
fought against him, but he determined to make no more telephone calls
but to proceed to Limehouse police station.

He stepped swiftly into the bar, and, as he had anticipated, nearly
upset the proprietor, who was standing listening by the half-open door.
Kerry smiled fiercely into the ugly face, lifted the flap, and walked
down the room, through the aisle between the scattered tables, where the
air was heavy with strange perfumes, touched now with the bite of London
fog, and where slanting eyes and straight eyes, sober eyes and drunken
eyes, regarded him furtively. Something of a second hush there was, but
one not so complete as the first.

Kerry pulled the curtain aside, mounted the stair, walked along the
passage and out through the swing door into the yellow gloom of the
Causeway. Ten slow steps he had taken when he detected a sound of
pursuit. Like a flash he turned, clenching his fists. Then:

“Inspector!” whispered a husky voice.

“Yes! Who are you? What do you want?”

A dim form loomed up through the fog.

“My name is Peters, sir. Inspector Preston knows me.”

Kerry had paused immediately under a street lamp, and now he looked into
the pinched, lean face of the speaker, and:

“I've heard of you,” he snapped. “Got some information for me?”

“I think so; but walk on.”

Chief Inspector Kerry hesitated. Peters belonged to a class which
Kerry despised with all the force of his straightforward character. A
professional informer has his uses from the police point of view; and
while evidence of this kind often figured in reports made to the Chief
Inspector, he personally avoided contact with such persons, as he
instinctively and daintily avoided contact with personal dirt. But now,
something so big was at stake that his hesitation was only momentary.

A vision of the pale face of Lady Rourke, of the golden head leaning
weakly back upon the cushions of the coupe, as he had glimpsed it in
Bond Street, rose before his mind's eye as if conjured up out of the
fog. Peters shuffled along beside him, and:

“Young Chada's done himself in to-night,” continued the husky voice. “He
brought a swell girl to the old man's house an hour ago. I was hanging
about there, thinking I might get some information. I think she was
doped.”

“Why?” snapped Kerry.

“Well, I was standing over on the other side of the street. Lou Chada
opened the door with a key; and when the light shone out I saw him carry
her in.”

“Carry her in?”

“Yes. She was in evening dress, with a swell cloak.”

“The car?”

“He came out again and drove it around to the garage at the back.”

“Why didn't you report this at once?”

“I was on my way to do it when I saw you coming out of Malay Jack's.”

The man's voice shook nervously, and:

“What are you scared about?” asked Kerry savagely. “Got anything else to
tell me?”

“No, no,” muttered Peters. “Only I've got an idea he saw me.”

“Who saw you?”

“Lou Chada.”

“What then?”

“Well, only--don't leave me till we get to the station.”

Kerry blew down his nose contemptuously, then stopped suddenly.

“Stand still,” he ordered. “I want to listen.”

Silent, they stood in a place of darkness, untouched by any lamplight.
Not a sound reached them through the curtain of fog. Asiatic mystery
wrapped them about, but Kerry experienced only contempt for the
cowardice of his companion, and:

“You need come no farther,” he said coldly. “Good night.”

“But------” began the man.

“Good night,” repeated Kerry.

He walked on briskly, tapping the pavement with his malacca. The
sneaking figure of the informer was swallowed up in the fog. But not
a dozen paces had the Chief Inspector gone when he was arrested by a
frenzied scream, rising, hollowly, in a dreadful, muffled crescendo.
Words reached him.

“My God, he's stabbed me!”

Then came a sort of babbling, which died into a moan.

“Hell!” muttered Kerry, “the poor devil was right!”

He turned and began to run back, fumbling in his pocket for his electric
torch. Almost in the same moment that he found it he stumbled upon
Peters, who lay half in the road and half upon the sidewalk.

Kerry pressed the button, and met the glance of upturned, glazing eyes.
Even as he dropped upon his knee beside the dying man, Peters swept his
arm around in a convulsive movement, having the fingers crooked, coughed
horribly, and rolled upon his face.

Switching off the light of the torch, Kerry clenched his jaws in a tense
effort of listening, literally holding his breath. But no sound reached
him through the muffling fog. A moment he hesitated, well knowing his
danger, then viciously snapping on the light again, he quested in the
blood-stained mud all about the body of the murdered man.

“Ah!”

It was an exclamation of triumph.

One corner hideously stained, for it had lain half under Peters's
shoulder, Kerry gingerly lifted between finger and thumb a handkerchief
of fine white silk, such as is carried in the breast pocket of an
evening coat.

It bore an ornate monogram worked in gold, and representing the letters
“L. C.” Oddly enough, it was the corner that bore the monogram which was
also bloodstained.




III

THE ROOM OF THE GOLDEN BUDDHA



It was a moot point whether Lady Pat Rourke merited condemnation or
pity. She possessed that type of blonde beauty which seems to be a
lodestone for mankind in general. Her husband was wealthy, twelve
years her senior, and, far from watching over her with jealous care--an
attitude which often characterizes such unions--he, on the contrary,
permitted her a dangerous freedom, believing that she would appreciate
without abusing it.

Her friendship with Lou Chada had first opened his eyes to the perils
which beset the road of least resistance. Sir Noel Rourke was an
Anglo-Indian, and his prejudice against the Eurasian was one not lightly
to be surmounted. Not all the polish which English culture had given to
this child of a mixed union could blind Sir Noel to the yellow streak.
Courted though Chada was by some of the best people, Sir Noel remained
cold.

The long, magnetic eyes, the handsome, clear-cut features, above all,
that slow and alluring smile, appealed to the husband of the wilful
Pat rather as evidences of Oriental, half-effeminate devilry than as
passports to decent society. Oxford had veneered him, but scratch the
veneer and one found the sandal-wood of the East, perfumed, seductive,
appealing, but something to be shunned as brittle and untrustworthy.

Yet he hesitated, seeking to be true to his convictions. Knowing what he
knew already, and what he suspected, it is certain that, could he have
viewed Lou Chada through the eyes of Chief Inspector Kerry, the affair
must have terminated otherwise. But Sir Noel did not know what Kerry
knew. And the pleasure-seeking Lady Rourke, with her hair of spun gold
and her provoking smile, found Lou Chada dangerously fascinating; almost
she was infatuated--she who had known so much admiration.

Of those joys for which thousands of her plainer sisters yearn and
starve to the end of their days she had experienced a surfeit. Always
she sought for novelty, for new adventures. She was confident of
herself, but yet--and here lay the delicious thrill--not wholly
confident. Many times she had promised to visit the house of Lou Chada's
father--a mystery palace cunningly painted, a perfumed page from the
Arabian poets dropped amid the interesting squalor of Limehouse.

Perhaps she had never intended to go. Who knows? But on the night when
she came within the ken of Chief Inspector Kerry, Lou Chada had urged
her to do so in his poetically passionate fashion, and, wanting to go,
she had asked herself: “Am I strong enough? Dare I?”

They had dined, danced, and she had smoked one of the scented cigarettes
which he alone seemed to be able to procure, and which, on their arrival
from the East, were contained in queer little polished wooden boxes.

Then had come an unfamiliar nausea and dizziness, an uncomfortable
recognition of the fact that she was making a fool of herself, and
finally a semi-darkness through which familiar faces loomed up and
were quickly lost again. There was the soft, musical voice of Lou Chada
reassuring her, a sense of chill, of helplessness, and then for a while
an interval which afterward she found herself unable to bridge.

Knowledge of verity came at last, and Lady Pat raised herself from the
divan upon which she had been lying, and, her slender hands clutching
the cushions, stared about her with eyes which ever grew wider.

She was in a long, rather lofty room, which was lighted by three silver
lanterns swung from the ceiling. The place, without containing much
furniture, was a riot of garish, barbaric colour. There were deep divans
cushioned in amber and blood-red. Upon the floor lay Persian carpets
and skins of beasts. Cunning niches there were, half concealing and half
revealing long-necked Chinese jars; and odd little carven tables bore
strangely fashioned vessels of silver. There was a cabinet of ebony
inlaid with jade, there were black tapestries figured with dragons of
green and gold. Curtains she saw of peacock-blue; and in a tall, narrow
recess, dominating the room, squatted a great golden Buddha.

The atmosphere was laden with a strange perfume.

But, above all, this room was silent, most oppressively silent.

Lady Pat started to her feet. The whole perfumed place seemed to be
swimming around her. Reclosing her eyes, she fought down her weakness.
The truth, the truth respecting Lou Chada and herself, had uprisen
starkly before her. By her own folly--and she could find no
tiny excuse--she had placed herself in the power of a man whom,
instinctively, deep within her soul, she had always known to be utterly
unscrupulous.

How cleverly he had concealed the wild animal which dwelt beneath
that suave, polished exterior! Yet how ill he had concealed it! For
intuitively she had always recognized its presence, but had deliberately
closed her eyes, finding a joy in the secret knowledge of danger. Now at
last he had discarded pretense.

The cigarette which he had offered her at the club had been drugged. She
was in Limehouse, at the mercy of a man in whose veins ran the blood of
ancestors to whom women had been chattels. Too well she recognized that
his passion must have driven him insane, as he must know at what cost
he took such liberties with one who could not lightly be so treated. But
these reflections afforded poor consolation. It was not of the penalties
that Lou Chada must suffer for this infringement of Western codes, but
of the price that she must pay for her folly, of which Pat was thinking.

There was a nauseating taste upon her palate. She remembered having
noticed it faintly while she was smoking the cigarette; indeed, she had
commented upon it at the time.

“The dirty yellow blackguard!” she said aloud, and clenched her hands.

She merely echoed what many a man had said before her. She wondered at
herself, and in doing so but wondered at the mystery of womanhood.

Clarity was returning. The room no longer swam around her. She crossed
in the direction of a garish curtain, which instinctively she divined to
mask a door. Dragging it aside, she tried the handle, but the door was
locked. A second door she found, and this also proved to be locked.

There was one tall window, also covered by ornate draperies, but it
was shuttered, and the shutters had locks. Another small window she
discovered, glazed with amber glass, but set so high in the wall as to
be inaccessible.

Dread assailed her, and dropping on to one of the divans, she hid her
face in her hands.

“My God!” she whispered. “My God! Give me strength--give me courage.”

For a long time she remained there, listening for any sound which should
disperse the silence. She thought of her husband, of the sweet security
of her home, of the things which she had forfeited because of this mad
quest of adventure. And presently a key grated in a lock.

Lady Pat started to her feet with a wild, swift action which must have
reminded a beholder of a startled gazelle. The drapery masking the door
which she had first investigated was drawn aside. A man entered and
dropped the curtain behind him.

Exactly what she had expected she could not have defined, but the
presence of this perfect stranger was a complete surprise. The man,
who wore embroidered slippers and a sort of long blue robe, stood there
regarding her with an expression which, even in her frantic condition,
she found to be puzzling. He had long, untidy gray hair brushed back
from his low brow; eyes strangely like the eyes of Lou Chada, except
that they were more heavy-lidded; but his skin was as yellow as a
guinea, and his gaunt, cleanshaven face was the face of an Oriental.

The slender hands, too, which he held clasped before him, were yellow,
and possessed a curiously arresting quality. Pat imagined them clasped
about her white throat, and her very soul seemed to shrink from the man
who stood there looking at her with those long, magnetic, inscrutable
eyes.

She wondered why she was surprised, and suddenly realized that it was
because of the expression in his eyes, for it was an expression of cold
anger. Then the intruder spoke.

“Who are you?” he demanded, speaking with an accent which was unfamiliar
to her, but in a voice which was not unlike the voice of Lou Chada. “Who
brought you here?”

This was so wholly unexpected that for a moment she found herself unable
to reply, but finally:

“How dare you!” she cried, her native courage reasserting itself. “I
have been drugged and brought to this place. You shall pay for it. How
dare you!”

“Ah!” The long, dark eyes regarded her unmovingly. “But who are you?”

“I am Lady Rourke. Open the door. You shall bitterly regret this
outrage.”

“You are Lady Rourke?” the man repeated. “Before you speak of regrets,
answer the question which I have asked: Who brought you here?”

“Lou Chada.”

“Ah!” There was no alteration of pose, no change of expression, but
slightly the intonation had varied.

“I don't know who you are, but I demand to be released from this place
instantly.”

The man standing before the curtained door slightly inclined his head.

“You shall be released,” he replied, “but not instantly. I will see the
one who brought you here. He may not be entirely to blame. Before you
leave we shall understand one another.”

Tone and glance were coldly angry. Then, before the frightened woman
could say another word, the man in the blue robe robe withdrew, the
curtain was dropped again, and she heard the grating of a key in the
lock. She ran to the door, beating upon it with her clenched hands.

“Let me go!” she cried, half hysterically. “Let me go! You shall pay for
this! Oh, you shall pay for this!”

No one answered, and, turning, she leaned back against the curtain,
breathing heavily and fighting for composure, for strength.




IV

ZANI CHADA, THE EURASIAN



“I can't help thinking, Chief Inspector,” said the officer in charge at
Limehouse Station, “that you take unnecessary risks.”

“Can't you?” said Kerry, tilting his bowler farther forward and staring
truculently at the speaker.

“No, I can't. Since you cleaned up the dope gang down here you've been
a marked man. These murders in the Chinatown area, of which this one
to-night makes the third, have got some kind of big influence behind
them. Yet you wander about in the fog without even a gun in your
pocket.”

“I don't believe in guns,” rapped Kerry. “My bare hands are good enough
for any yellow smart in this area. And if they give out I can kick like
a mule.”

The other laughed, shaking his head.

“It's silly, all the same,” he persisted. “The man who did the job out
there in the fog to-night might have knifed you or shot you long before
you could have got here.”

“He might,” snapped Kerry, “but he didn't.”

Yet, remembering his wife, who would be waiting for him in the cosy
sitting-room he knew a sudden pang. Perhaps he did take unnecessary
chances. Others had said so. Hard upon the thought came the memory of
his boy, and of the telephone message which the episodes of the night
had prevented him from sending.

He remembered, too, something which his fearless nature had prompted him
to forget: he remembered how, just as he had arisen from beside the body
of the murdered man, oblique eyes had regarded him swiftly out of the
fog. He had lashed out with a boxer's instinct, but his knuckles had
encountered nothing but empty air. No sound had come to tell him that
the thing had not been an illusion. Only, once again, as he groped his
way through the shuttered streets of Chinatown and the silence of
the yellow mist, something had prompted him to turn; and again he had
detected the glint of oblique eyes, and faintly had discerned the form
of one who followed him.

Kerry chewed viciously, then:

“I think I'll 'phone the wife,” he said abruptly. “She'll be expecting
me.”

Almost before he had finished speaking the 'phone bell rang, and a few
moments later:

“Someone to speak to you, Chief Inspector,” cried the officer in charge.

“Ah!” exclaimed Kerry, his fierce eyes lighting up. “That will be from
home.”

“I don't think so,” was the reply. “But see who it is.”

“Hello!” he called.

He was answered by an unfamiliar voice, a voice which had a queer,
guttural intonation. It was the sort of voice he had learned to loathe.

“Is that Chief Inspector Kerry?”

“Yes,” he snapped.

“May I take it that what I have to say will be treated in confidence?”

“Certainly not.”

“Think again, Chief Inspector,” the voice continued. “You are a man
within sight of the ambition of years, and although you may be unaware
of the fact, you stand upon the edge of a disaster. I appreciate your
sense of duty and respect it. But there are times when diplomacy is a
more potent weapon than force.”

Kerry, listening, became aware that the speaker was a man of cultured
intellect. He wondered greatly, but:

“My time is valuable,” he said rapidly. “Come to the point. What do you
want and who are you?”

“One moment, Chief Inspector. An opportunity to make your fortune
without interfering with your career has come in your way. You have
obtained possession of what you believe to be a clue to a murder.”

The voice ceased, and Kerry remaining silent, immediately continued:

“Knowing your personal character, I doubt if you have communicated the
fact of your possessing this evidence to anyone else. I suggest, in your
own interests, that before doing so you interview me.”

Kerry thought rapidly, and then:

“I don't say you're right,” he rapped back. “But if I come to see you,
I shall leave a sealed statement in possession of the officer in charge
here.”

“To this I have no objection,” the guttural voice replied, “but I beg of
you to bring the evidence with you.”

“I'm not to be bought,” warned Kerry. “Don't think it and don't suggest
it, or when I get to you I'll break you in half.”

His red moustache positively bristled, and he clutched the receiver so
tightly that it quivered against his ear.

“You mistake me,” replied the speaker. “My name is Zani Chada. You know
where I live. I shall not detain you more than five minutes if you will
do me the honour of calling upon me.”

Kerry chewed furiously for ten momentous seconds, then:

“I'll come!” he said.

He replaced the receiver on the hook, and, walking across to the charge
desk, took an official form and a pen. On the back of the form he
scribbled rapidly, watched with curiosity by the officer in charge.

“Give me an envelope,” he directed.

An envelope was found and handed to him. He placed the paper in the
envelope, gummed down the lapel, and addressed it in large, bold writing
to the Assistant Commissioner of the Criminal Investigation Department,
who was his chief. Finally:

“I'm going out,” he explained.

“After what I've said?”

“After what you've said. I'm going out. If I don't come back or don't
telephone within the next hour, you will know what to do with this.”

The Limehouse official stared perplexedly.

“But meanwhile,” he protested, “what steps am I to take about the
murder? Durham will be back with the body at any moment now, and you say
you've got a clue to the murderer.”

“I have,” said Kerry, “but I'm going to get definite evidence. Do
nothing until you hear from me.”

“Very good,” answered the other, and Kerry, tucking his malacca cane
under his arm, strode out into the fog.

His knowledge of the Limehouse area was extensive and peculiar, so that
twenty minutes later, having made only one mistake in the darkness, he
was pressing an electric bell set beside a door which alone broke the
expanse of a long and dreary brick wall, lining a street which neither
by day nor night would have seemed inviting to the casual visitor.

The door was opened by a Chinaman wearing national dress, revealing
a small, square lobby, warmly lighted and furnished Orientally. Kerry
stepped in briskly.

“I want to see Mr. Zani Chada. Tell him I am here. Chief Inspector Kerry
is my name.”

The Chinaman bowed, crossed the lobby, and, drawing some curtains aside,
walked up four carpeted stairs and disappeared into a short passage
revealed by the raising of the tapestry. As he did so Kerry stared about
him curiously.

He had never before entered the mystery house of Zani Chada, nor had he
personally encountered the Eurasian, reputed to be a millionaire,
but who chose, for some obscure reason, to make his abode in this old
rambling building, once a country mansion, which to-day was closely
invested by dockland and the narrow alleys of Chinatown. It was
curiously still in the lobby, and, as he determined, curiously Eastern.
He was conscious of a sense of exhilaration. That Zani Chada controlled
powerful influences, he knew well. But, reviewing the precautions
which he had taken, Kerry determined that the trump card was in his
possession.

The Chinese servant descended the stairs again and intimated that the
visitor should follow him. Kerry, carrying his hat and cane, mounted the
stairs, walked along the carpeted passage, and was ushered into a queer,
low room furnished as a library.

It was lined with shelves containing strange-looking books, none of
which appeared to be English. Upon the top of the shelves were grotesque
figures of gods, pieces of Chinese pottery and other Oriental ornaments.
Arms there were in the room, and rich carpets, carven furniture, and an
air of luxury peculiarly exotic. Furthermore, he detected a faint smell
of opium from which fact he divined that Zani Chada was addicted to the
national vice of China.

Seated before a long narrow table was the notorious Eurasian. The table
contained a number of strange and unfamiliar objects, as well as a small
rack of books. An opium pipe rested in a porcelain bowl.

Zani Chada, wearing a blue robe, sat in a cushioned chair, staring
toward the Chief Inspector. With one slender yellow hand he brushed his
untidy gray hair. His long magnetic eyes were half closed.

“Good evening, Chief Inspector Kerry,” he said. “Won't you be seated?”

“Thanks, I'm not staying. I can hear what you've got to say standing.”

The long eyes grew a little more narrow--the only change of expression
that Zani Chada allowed himself.

“As you wish. I have no occasion to detain you long.”

In that queer, perfumed room, with the suggestion of something sinister
underlying its exotic luxury, arose a kind of astral clash as the
powerful personality of the Eurasian came in contact with that of Kerry.
In a sense it was a contest of rapier and battle-axe; an insidious but
powerful will enlisted against the bulldog force of the Chief Inspector.

Still through half-closed eyes Zani Chada watched his visitor, who
stood, feet apart and chin thrust forward aggressively, staring with
wide open, fierce blue eyes at the other.

“I'm going to say one thing,” declared Kerry, snapping out the words
in a manner little short of ferocious. He laid his hat and cane upon a
chair and took a step in the direction of the narrow, laden table. “Make
me any kind of offer to buy back the evidence you think I've got, and
I'll bash your face as flat as a frying-pan.”

The yellow hands of Zani Chada clutched the metal knobs which ornamented
the arms of the chair in which he was seated. The long eyes now
presented the appearance of being entirely closed; otherwise he remained
immovable.

Following a short, portentous silence:

“How grossly you misunderstood me, Chief Inspector,” Chada replied,
speaking very softly. “You are shortly to be promoted to a post which no
one is better fitted to occupy. You enjoy great domestic happiness, and
you possess a son in whom you repose great hopes. In this respect Chief
Inspector, I resemble you.”

Kerry's nostrils were widely dilated, but he did not speak.

“You see,” continued the Eurasian, “I know many things about you.
Indeed, I have watched your career with interest. Now, to be brief, a
great scandal may be averted and a woman's reputation preserved if you
and I, as men of the world, can succeed in understanding one another.”

“I don't want to understand you,” said Kerry bluntly. “But you've said
enough already to justify me in blowing this whistle.” He drew a police
whistle from his overcoat pocket. “This house is being watched.”

“I am aware of the fact,” murmured Zani Chada.

“There are two people in it I want for two different reasons. If you say
much more there may be three.”

Chada raised his hand slowly.

“Put back your whistle, Chief Inspector.”

There was a curious restraint in the Eurasian's manner which Kerry
distrusted, but for which at the time he was at a loss to account. Then
suddenly he determined that the man was waiting for something, listening
for some sound. As if to confirm this reasoning, just at that moment a
sound indeed broke the silence of the room.

Somewhere far away in the distance of the big house a gong was beaten
three times softly. Kerry's fierce glance searched the face of Zani
Chada, but it remained mask-like, immovable. Yet that this had been a
signal of some kind the Chief Inspector did not doubt, and:

“You can't trick me,” he said fiercely. “No one can leave this house
without my knowledge, and because of what happened out there in the fog
my hands are untied.”

He took up his hat and cane from the chair.

“I'm going to search the premises,” he declared.

Zani Chada stood up slowly.

“Chief Inspector,” he said, “I advise you to do nothing until you have
consulted your wife.”

“Consulted my wife?” snapped Kerry. “What the devil do you mean?”

“I mean that any steps you may take now can only lead to disaster for
many, and in your own case to great sorrow.”

Kerry took a step forward, two steps, then paused. He was considering
certain words which the Eurasian had spoken. Without fearing the man
in the physical sense, he was not fool enough to underestimate his
potentialities for evil and his power to strike darkly.

“Act as you please,” added Zani Chada, speaking even more softly. “But
I have not advised lightly. I will receive you, Chief Inspector, at any
hour of the night you care to return. By to-morrow, if you wish, you may
be independent of everybody.”

Kerry clenched his fists.

“And great sorrow may be spared to others,” concluded the Eurasian.

Kerry's teeth snapped together audibly; then, putting on his hat, he
turned and walked straight to the door.




V

DAN KERRY, JUNIOR



Dan Kerry, junior, was humorously like his father, except that he was
larger-boned and promised to grow into a much bigger man. His hair was
uncompromisingly red, and grew in such irregular fashion that the comb
was not made which could subdue it. He had the wide-open, fighting blue
eyes of the Chief Inspector, and when he smiled the presence of two
broken teeth lent him a very pugilistic appearance.

On his advent at the school of which he was now one of the most popular
members, he had promptly been christened “Carrots.” To this nickname
young Kerry had always taken exception, and he proceeded to display
his prejudice on the first day of his arrival with such force and
determination that the sobriquet had been withdrawn by tacit consent of
every member of the form who hitherto had favoured it.

“I'll take you all on,” the new arrival had declared amidst a silence of
stupefaction, “starting with you”--pointing to the biggest boy. “If we
don't finish to-day, I'll begin again to-morrow.”

The sheer impudence of the thing had astounded everybody. Young Kerry's
treatment of his leading persecutor had produced a salutary change of
opinion. Of such kidney was Daniel Kerry, junior; and when, some hours
after his father's departure on the night of the murder in the fog, the
'phone bell rang, it was Dan junior, and not his mother, who answered
the call.

“Hallo!” said a voice. “Is that Chief Inspector Kerry's house?”

“Yes,” replied Dan.

“It has begun to rain in town,” the voice continued, “Is that the Chief
Inspector's son speaking?”

“Yes, I'm Daniel Kerry.”

“Well, my boy, you know the way to New Scotland Yard?”

“Rather.”

“He says will you bring his overall? Do you know where to find it?”

“Yes, yes!” cried Dan excitedly, delighted to be thus made a party to
his father's activities.

“Well, get it. Jump on a tram at the Town Hall and bring the overall
along here. Your mother will not object, will she?”

“Of course not,” cried Dan. “I'll tell her. Am I to start now?”

“Yes, right away.”

Mrs. Kerry was sewing by the fire in the dining room when her son came
in with the news, his blue eyes sparkling excitedly. She nodded her head
slowly.

“Ye'll want ye'r Burberry and ye'r thick boots,” she declared, “a
muffler, too, and ye'r oldest cap. I think it's madness for ye to go out
on such a night, but----”

“Father said I could,” protested the boy.

“He says so, and ye shall go, but I think it madness a' the same.”

However, some ten minutes later young Kerry set out, keenly resenting
the woollen muffler which he had been compelled to wear, and secretly
determined to remove it before mounting the tram. Across one arm he
carried the glistening overall which was the Chief Inspector's constant
companion on wet nights abroad. The fog had turned denser, and ten paces
from the door of the house took him out of sight of the light streaming
from the hallway.

Mary Kerry well knew her husband's theories about coddling boys, but
even so could not entirely reconcile herself to the present expedition.
However, closing the door, she returned philosophically to her sewing,
reflecting that little harm could come to Dan after all, for he was
strong, healthy, and intelligent.

On went the boy through the mist, whistling merrily. Not twenty yards
from the house a coupe was drawn up, and by the light of one of its
lamps a man was consulting a piece of paper on which, presumably, an
address was written; for, as the boy approached, the man turned, his
collar pulled up about his face, his hat pulled down.

“Hallo!” he called. “Can you please tell me something?”

He spoke with a curious accent, unfamiliar to the boy. “A foreigner of
some kind,” young Kerry determined.

“What is it?” he asked, pausing.

“Will you please read and tell me if I am near this place?” the man
continued, holding up the paper which he had been scrutinizing.

Dan stepped forward and bent over it. He could not make out the writing,
and bent yet more, holding it nearer to the lamp. At which moment some
second person neatly pinioned him from behind, a scarf was whipped about
his head, and, kicking furiously but otherwise helpless, he felt himself
lifted and placed inside the car.

The muffler had been thrown in such fashion about his face as to leave
one eye partly free, and as he was lifted he had a momentary glimpse of
his captors. With a thrill of real, sickly terror he realized that he
was in the hands of Chinamen!

Perhaps telepathically this spasm of fear was conveyed to his father,
for it was at about this time that the latter was interviewing Zani
Chada, and at about this time that Kerry recognized, underlying the
other's words, at once an ill-concealed suspense and a threat. Then,
a few minutes later, had come the three strokes of the gong; and again
that unreasonable dread had assailed him, perhaps because it signalized
the capture of his son, news of which had been immediately telephoned to
Limehouse by Zani Chada's orders.

Certain it is that Kerry left the Eurasian's house in a frame of mind
which was not familiar to him. He was undecided respecting his next
move. A deadly menace underlay Chada's words.

“Consult your wife,” he kept muttering to himself. When the door was
opened for him by the Chinese servant, he paused a moment before going
out into the fog. There were men on duty at the back and at the front of
the house. Should he risk all and raid the place? That Lady Rourke was
captive here he no longer doubted. But it was equally certain that no
further harm would come to her at the hands of her captors, since she
had been traced there and since Zani Chada was well aware of the fact.
Of the whereabouts of Lou Chada he could not be certain. If he was in
the house, they had him.

The door was closed by the Chinaman, and Kerry stood out in the darkness
of the dismal, brick-walled street, feeling something as nearly akin
to dejection as was possible in one of his mercurial spirit. Something
trickled upon the brim of his hat, and, raising his head, Kerry detected
rain upon his upturned face. He breathed a prayer of thankfulness. This
would put an end to the fog.

He began to walk along by the high brick wall, but had not proceeded far
before a muffled figure arose before him and the light of an electric
torch was shone into his face.

“Oh, it's you, Chief Inspector!” came the voice of the watcher.

“It is,” rapped Kerry. “Unless there are tunnels under this old
rat-hole, I take it the men on duty can cover all the exits?”

“All the main exits,” was the reply. “But, as you say, it's a strange
house, and Zani Chada has a stranger reputation.”

“Do nothing until you hear from me.”

“Very good, Chief Inspector.”

The rain now was definitely conquering the fog, and in half the time
which had been occupied by the outward journey Kerry was back again in
Limehouse police station. Unconsciously he had been hastening his pace
with every stride, urged onward by an unaccountable anxiety, so that
finally he almost ran into the office and up to the desk where the
telephone stood.

Lifting it, he called his own number and stood tapping his foot,
impatiently awaiting the reply. Presently came the voice of the
operator: “Have they answered yet?”

“No.”

“I will ring them again.”

Kerry's anxiety became acute, almost unendurable; and when at last,
after repeated attempts, no reply could be obtained from his home, he
replaced the receiver and leaned for a moment on the desk, shaken with
such a storm of apprehension as he had rarely known. He turned to the
inspector in charge, and:

“Let me have that envelope I left with you,” he directed. “And have
someone 'phone for a taxi; they are to keep on till they get one. Where
is Sergeant Durham?”

“At the mortuary.”

“Ah!”

“Any developments, Chief Inspector?”

“Yes. But apart from keeping a close watch upon the house of Zani Chada
you are to do nothing until you hear from me again.”

“Very good,” said the inspector. “Are you going to wait for Durham's
report?”

“No. Directly the cab arrives I am going to wait for nothing.”

Indeed, he paced up and down the room like a wild beast caged, while
call after call was sent to neighbouring cab ranks, for a long time
without result. What did it mean, his wife's failure to answer the
telephone? It might mean that neither she nor their one servant nor Dan
was in the house. And if they were not in the house at this hour of the
night, where could they possibly be? This it might mean, or--something
worse.

A thousand and one possibilities, hideous, fantastic, appalling, flashed
through his mind. He was beginning to learn what Zani Chada had meant
when he had said: “I have followed your career with interest.”

At last a taxi was found, and the man instructed over the 'phone to
proceed immediately to Limehouse station. He seemed so long in coming
that when at last the cab was heard to pause outside, Kerry could not
trust himself to speak to the driver, but directed a sergeant to give
him the address. He entered silently and closed the door.

A steady drizzle of rain was falling. It had already dispersed the fog,
so that he might hope with luck to be home within the hour. As a matter
of fact, the man performed the journey in excellent time, but it seemed
to his passenger that he could have walked quicker, such was the gnawing
anxiety within him and the fear which prompted him to long for wings.

Instructing the cabman to wait, Kerry unlocked the front door and
entered. He had noted a light in the dining room window, and entering,
he found his wife awaiting him there. She rose as he entered, with
horror in her comely face.

“Dan!” she whispered. “Dan! where is ye'r mackintosh?”

“I didn't take it,” he replied, endeavouring to tell himself that his
apprehensions had been groundless. “But how was it that you did not
answer the telephone?”

“What do ye mean, Dan?” Mary Kerry stared, her eyes growing wider and
wider. “The boy answered, Dan. He set out wi' ye'r mackintosh full an
hour and a half since.”

“What!”

The truth leaped out at Kerry like an enemy out of ambush.

“Who sent that message?”

“Someone frae the Yard, to tell the boy to bring ye'r mackintosh alone
at once. Dan! Dan------”

She advanced, hands outstretched, quivering, but Kerry had leaped out
into the narrow hallway. He raised the telephone receiver, listened for
a moment, and then jerked it back upon the hook.

“Dead line!” he muttered. “Someone has been at work with a wire-cutter
outside the house!”

His wife came out to where he stood, and, clenching his teeth very
grimly, he took her in his arms. She was shaking as if palsied.

“Mary dear,” he said, “pray with all your might that I am given strength
to do my duty.”

She looked at him with haggard, tearless eyes.

“Tell me the truth: ha' they got my boy?”

His fingers tightened on her shoulders.

“Don't worry,” he said, “and don't ask me to stay to explain. When I
come back I'll have Dan with me!”

He trusted himself no further, but, clapping his hat on his head, walked
out to the waiting cab.

“Back to Limehouse police station,” he directed rapidly.

“Lor lumme!” muttered the taximan. “Where are you goin' to after that,
guv'nor? It's a bit off the map.”

“I'm going to hell!” rapped Kerry, suddenly thrusting his red face very
near to that of the speaker. “And you're going to drive me!”




VI

THE KNIGHT ERRANT



Recognizing the superior strength of his captors, young Kerry soon gave
up struggling. The thrill of his first real adventure entered into his
blood. He remembered that he was the son of his father, and he realized,
being a quick-witted lad, that he was in the grip of enemies of his
father. The panic which had threatened him when first he had recognized
that he was in the hands of Chinese, gave place to a cold rage--a
heritage which in later years was to make him a dangerous man.

He lay quite passively in the grasp of someone who held him fast, and
learned, by breathing quietly, that the presence of the muffler about
his nose and mouth did not greatly inconvenience him. There was some
desultory conversation between the two men in the car, but it
was carried on in an odd, sibilant language which the boy did not
understand, but which he divined to be Chinese. He thought how every
other boy in the school would envy him, and the thought was stimulating,
nerving. On the very first day of his holidays he was become the central
figure of a Chinatown drama.

The last traces of fear fled. His position was uncomfortable and his
limbs were cramped, but he resigned himself, with something almost like
gladness, and began to look forward to that which lay ahead with a zest
and a will to be no passive instrument which might have surprised his
captors could they have read the mind of their captive.

The journey seemed almost interminable, but young Kerry suffered it in
stoical silence until the car stopped and he was lifted and carried down
stone steps into some damp, earthy-smelling place. Some distance was
traversed, and then many flights of stairs were mounted, some bare but
others carpeted.

Finally he was deposited in a chair, and as he raised his hand to the
scarf, which toward the end of the journey had been bound more tightly
about his head so as to prevent him from seeing at all, he heard a door
closed and locked.

The scarf was quickly removed. And Dan found himself in a low-ceilinged
attic having a sloping roof and one shuttered window. A shadeless
electric lamp hung from the ceiling. Excepting the cane-seated chair in
which he had been deposited and a certain amount of nondescript lumber,
the attic was unfurnished. Dan rapidly considered what his father would
have done in the circumstances.

“Make sure that the door is locked,” he muttered.

He tried it, and it was locked beyond any shadow of doubt.

“The window.”

Shutters covered it, and these were fastened with a padlock.

He considered this padlock attentively; then, drawing from his pocket
one of those wonderful knives which are really miniature tool-chests, he
raised from a grove the screw-driver which formed part of its equipment,
and with neatness and dispatch unscrewed the staple to which the padlock
was attached!

A moment later he had opened the shutters and was looking out into the
drizzle of the night.

The room in which he was confined was on the third floor of a dingy,
brick-built house; a portion of some other building faced him; down
below was a stone-paved courtyard. To the left stood a high wall, and
beyond it he obtained a glimpse of other dingy buildings. One lighted
window was visible--a square window in the opposite building, from which
amber light shone out.

Somewhere in the street beyond was a standard lamp. He could detect the
halo which it cast into the misty rain. The glass was very dirty, and
young Kerry raised the sash, admitting a draught of damp, cold air into
the room. He craned out, looking about him eagerly.

A rainwater-pipe was within reach of his hand on the right of the window
and, leaning out still farther, young Kerry saw that it passed beside
two other, larger, windows on the floor beneath him. Neither of these
showed any light.

Dizzy heights have no terror for healthy youth. The brackets supporting
the rain-pipe were a sufficient staircase for the agile Dan, a more
slippery prisoner than the famous Baron Trenck; and, discarding his
muffler and his Burberry, he climbed out upon the sill and felt with his
thick-soled boots for the first of these footholds. Clutching the ledge,
he lowered himself and felt for the next.

Then came the moment when he must trust all his weight to the pipe.
Clenching his teeth, he risked it, felt for and found the third angle,
and then, still clutching the pipe, stood for a moment upon the ledge
of the window immediately beneath him. He was curious respecting the
lighted window of the neighbouring house; and, twisting about, he bent,
peering across--and saw a sight which arrested his progress.

The room within was furnished in a way which made him gasp with
astonishment. It was like an Eastern picture, he thought. Her golden
hair dishevelled and her hands alternately clenching and unclenching,
a woman whom he considered to be most wonderfully dressed was pacing
wildly up and down, a look of such horror upon her pale face that Dan's
heart seemed to stop beating for a moment!

Here was real trouble of a sort which appealed to all the chivalry
in the boy's nature. He considered the window, which was glazed with
amber-coloured glass, observed that it was sufficiently open to enable
him to slip the fastening and open it entirely could he but reach it.
And--yes!--there was a rain-pipe!

Climbing down to the yard, he looked quickly about him, ran across, and
climbed up to the lighted window. A moment later he had pushed it widely
open.

He was greeted by a stifled cry, but, cautiously transferring his weight
from the friendly pipe to the ledge, he got astride of it, one foot in
the room. Then, by exercise of a monkey-like agility, he wriggled his
head and shoulders within.

“It's all right,” he said softly and reassuringly; “I'm Dan Kerry, son
of Chief Inspector Kerry. Can I be of any assistance?”

Her hands clasped convulsively together, the woman stood looking up at
him.

“Oh, thank God!” said the captive. “But what are you going to do? Can
you get me out?”

“Don't worry,” replied Dan confidently. “Father and I can manage it all
right!”

He performed a singular contortion, as a result of which his other leg
and foot appeared inside the window. Then, twisting around, he lowered
himself and dropped triumphantly upon a cushioned divan. At that moment
he would have faced a cage full of man-eating tigers. The spirit of
adventure had him in its grip. He stood up, breathing rapidly, his crop
of red hair more dishevelled than usual.

Then, before he could stir or utter any protest, the golden-haired
princess whom he had come to rescue stooped, threw her arms around his
neck, and kissed him.

“You darling, brave boy!” she said. “I think you have saved me from
madness.”

Young Kerry, more flushed than ever, extricated himself, and:

“You're not out of the mess yet,” he protested. “The only difference is
that I'm in it with you!”

“But where is your father?”

“I'm looking for him.”

“What!”

“Oh! he's about somewhere,” Dan assured her confidently.

“But, but----” She was gazing at him wide-eyed, “Didn't he send you
here?”

“You bet he didn't,” returned young Kerry. “I came here on my own
accord, and when I go you're coming with me. I can't make out how you
got here, anyway. Do you know whose house this is?”

“Oh, I do, I do!”

“Whose?”

“It belongs to a man called Chada.”

“Chada? Never heard of him. But I mean, what part of London is it in?”

“Whatever do you mean? It is in Limehouse, I believe. I don't
understand. You came here.”

“I didn't,” said young Kerry cheerfully; “I was fetched!”

“By your father?”

“Not on your life. By a couple of Chinks! I'll tell you something.”
 He raised his twinkling blue eyes. “We are properly up against it. I
suppose you couldn't climb down a rain-pipe?”




VII

RETRIBUTION



It was that dark, still, depressing hour of the night, when all life
is at its lowest ebb. In the low, strangely perfumed room of books Zani
Chada sat before his table, his yellow hands clutching the knobs on his
chair arms, his long, inscrutable eyes staring unseeingly before him.

Came a disturbance and the sound of voices, and Lou Chada, his son,
stood at the doorway. He still wore his evening clothes, but he no
longer looked smart. His glossy black hair was dishevelled, and his
handsome, olive face bore a hunted look. Panic was betoken by twitching
mouth and fear-bright eyes. He stopped, glaring at his father, and:

“Why are you not gone?” asked the latter sternly. “Do you wish to wreck
me as well as yourself?”

“The police have posted a man opposite Kwee's house. I cannot get out
that way.”

“There was no one there when the boy was brought in.”

“No, but there is now. Father!” He took a step forward. “I'm trapped.
They sha'n't take me. You won't let them take me?”

Zani Chada stirred not a muscle, but:

“To-night,” he said, “your mad passion has brought ruin to both of us.
For the sake of a golden doll who is not worth the price of the jewels
she wears, you have placed yourself within reach of the hangman.”

“I was mad, I was mad,” groaned the other.

“But I, who was sane, am involved in the consequences,” retorted his
father.

“He will be silent at the price of the boy's life.”

“He may be,” returned Zani Chada. “I hate him, but he is a man. Had you
escaped, he might have consented to be silent. Once you are arrested,
nothing would silence him.”

“If the case is tried it will ruin Pat's reputation.”

“What a pity!” said Zani Chada.

In some distant part of the house a gong was struck three times.

“Go,” commanded his father. “Remain at Kwee's house until I send for
you. Let Ah Fang go to the room above and see that the woman is silent.
An outcry would ruin our last chance.”

Lou Chada raised his hands, brushing the hair back from his wet
forehead, then, staring haggardly at his father, turned and ran from the
room.

A minute later Kerry was ushered in by the Chinese servant. The savage
face was set like a mask. Without removing his hat, he strode across
to the table and bent down so that fierce, wide-open blue eyes stared
closely into long, half-closed black ones.

“I've got one thing to say,” explained Kerry huskily. “Whatever the
hangman may do to your slimy son, and whatever happens to the little
blonde fool he kidnapped, if you've laid a hand on my kid I'll kick you
to death, if I follow you round the world to do it.”

Zani Chada made no reply, but his knuckles gleamed, so tightly did he
clutch the knobs on the chair arms. Kerry's savagery would have awed
any man, even though he had supposed it to be the idle threat of a
passionate man. But Zani Chada knew all men, and he knew this one. When
Daniel Kerry declared that in given circumstances he would kick Zani
Chada to death, he did not mean that he would shoot him, strangle him,
or even beat him with his fists; he meant precisely what he said--that
he would kick him to death--and Zani Chada knew it.

Thus there were some moments of tense silence during which the savage
face of the Chief Inspector drew even closer to the gaunt, yellow face
of the Eurasian. Finally:

“Listen only for one moment,” said Zani Chada. His voice had lost
its guttural intonation. He spoke softly, sibilantly. “I, too, am a
father------”

“Don't mince words!” shouted Kerry. “You've kidnapped my boy. If I have
to tear your house down brick by brick I'll find him. And if you've hurt
one hair of his head--you know what to expect!”

He quivered. The effort of suppression which he had imposed upon himself
was frightful to witness. Zani Chada, student of men, knew that in
despite of his own physical strength and of the hidden resources at his
beck, he stood nearer to primitive retribution than he had ever done.
Yet:

“I understand,” he continued. “But you do not understand. Your boy is
not in this house. Oh! violence cannot avail! It can only make his loss
irreparable.”

Kerry, nostrils distended, eyes glaring madly, bent over him.

“Your scallywag of a son,” he said hoarsely, “has gone one step too far.
His adventures have twice before ended in murder--and you have covered
him. This time you can't do it. I'm not to be bought. We've stood for
the Far East in London long enough. Your cub hangs this time. Get me?
There'll be no bargaining. The woman's reputation won't stop me. My
kid's danger won't stop me. But if you try to use him as a lever I'll
boot you to your stinking yellow paradise and they'll check you in as
pulp.”

“You speak of three deaths,” murmured Zani Chada.

Kerry clenched his teeth so tightly that his maxillary muscles protruded
to an abnormal degree. He thrust his clenched fists into his coat
pockets.

“We all follow our vocations in life,” resumed the Eurasian, “to the
best of our abilities. But is professional kudos not too dearly bought
at the price of a loved one lost for ever? A far better bargain
would be, shall we say, ten thousand pounds, as the price of a silk
handkerchief------”

Kerry's fierce blue eyes closed for a fraction of a second. Yet, in that
fraction of a second, he had visualized some of the things which ten
thousand pounds--a sum he could never hope to possess--would buy. He had
seen his home, as he would have it--and he had seen Dan there, safe and
happy at his mother's side. Was he entitled to disregard the happiness
of his wife, the life of his boy, the honourable name of Sir
Noel Rourke, because an outcast like Peters had come to a fitting
end--because a treacherous Malay and a renegade Chinaman had, earlier,
gone the same way, sped, as he suspected, by the same hand?

“My resources are unusual,” added Chada, speaking almost in a whisper.
“I have cash to this amount in my safe------”

So far he had proceeded when he was interrupted; and the cause of the
interruption was this:

A few moments earlier another dramatic encounter had taken place in a
distant part of the house. Kerry Junior, having scientifically tested
all the possible modes of egress from the room in which Lady Pat was
confined, had long ago desisted, and had exhausted his ingenuity in
plans which discussion had proved to be useless. In spite of the novelty
and the danger of his situation, nature was urging her laws. He was
growing sleepy. The crowning tragedy had been the discovery that he
could not regain the small, square window set high in the wall from
which he had dropped into this luxurious prison. Now, as the two sat
side by side upon a cushioned divan, the woman's arm about the boy's
shoulders, they were startled to hear, in the depths of the house, three
notes of a gong.

Young Kerry's sleepiness departed. He leapt to his feet as though
electrified.

“What was that?”

There was something horrifying in those gong notes in the stillness of
the night. Lady Pat's beautiful eyes grew glassy with fear.

“I don't know,” replied Dan. “It seemed to come from below.”

He ran to the door, drew the curtain aside, and pressed his ear against
one of the panels, listening intently. As he did so, his attitude grew
tense, his expression changed, then:

“We're saved!” he cried, turning a radiant face to the woman. “I heard
my father's voice!”

“Oh, are you sure, are you sure?”

“Absolutely sure!”

He bent to press his ear to the panel again, when a stifled cry from his
companion brought him swiftly to his feet. The second door in the room
had opened silently, and a small Chinaman, who carried himself with a
stoop, had entered, and now, a menacing expression upon his face, was
quickly approaching the boy.

What he had meant to do for ever remained in doubt, for young Kerry,
knowing his father to be in the house and seeing an open door before
him, took matters into his own hands. At the moment that the silent
Chinaman was about to throw his arms about him, the pride of the junior
school registered a most surprising left accurately on the point of Ah
Fang's jaw, following it up by a wilful transgression of Queensberry
rules in the form of a stomach punch which temporarily decided the
issue. Then:

“Quick! quick!” he cried breathlessly, grasping Lady Pat's hand. “This
is where we run!”

In such fashion was Zani Chada interrupted, the interruption taking the
form of a sudden, shrill outcry:

“Dad! dad! Where are you, dad?”

Kerry spun about as a man galvanized. His face became transfigured.

“This way, Dan!” he cried. “This way, boy!”

Came a clatter of hurrying feet, and into the low, perfumed room
burst Dan Kerry, junior, tightly clasping the hand of a pale-faced,
dishevelled woman in evening dress. It was Lady Rourke; and although
she seemed to be in a nearly fainting condition, Dan dragged her, half
running, into the room.

Kerry gave one glance at the pair, then, instantly, he turned to face
Zani Chada. The latter, like a man of stone, sat in his carved chair,
eyes nearly closed. The Chief Inspector whipped out a whistle and raised
it to his lips. He blew three blasts upon it.

From one--two--three--four points around the house the signal was
answered.

Zani Chada fully opened his long, basilisk eyes.

“You win, Chief Inspector,” he said. “But much may be done by clever
counsel. If all fails------”

“Well?” rapped Kerry fiercely, at the same time throwing his arm around
the boy.

“I may continue to take an interest in your affairs.”

A tremendous uproar arose, within and without the house. The police
were raiding the place. Lady Rourke sank down, slowly, almost at the
Eurasian's feet.

But Chief Inspector Kerry experienced an unfamiliar chill as his
uncompromising stare met the cold hatred which blazed out of the black
eyes, narrowed, now, and serpentine, of Zani Chada.






THE PIGTAIL OF HI WING HO






I

HOW I OBTAINED IT



Leaving the dock gates behind me I tramped through the steady drizzle,
going parallel with the river and making for the Chinese quarter. The
hour was about half-past eleven on one of those September nights when,
in such a locality as this, a stifling quality seems to enter the
atmosphere, rendering it all but unbreathable. A mist floated over
the river, and it was difficult to say if the rain was still falling,
indeed, or if the ample moisture upon my garments was traceable only to
the fog. Sounds were muffled, lights dimmed, and the frequent hooting of
sirens from the river added another touch of weirdness to the scene.

Even when the peculiar duties of my friend, Paul Harley, called him
away from England, the lure of this miniature Orient which I had first
explored under his guidance, often called me from my chambers. In the
house with the two doors in Wade Street, Limehouse, I would discard the
armour of respectability, and, dressed in a manner unlikely to provoke
comment in dockland, would haunt those dreary ways sometimes from
midnight until close upon dawn. Yet, well as I knew the district and
the strange and often dangerous creatures lurking in its many burrows, I
experienced a chill partly physical and partly of apprehension to-night;
indeed, strange though it may sound, I hastened my footsteps in order
the sooner to reach the low den for which I was bound--Malay Jack's--a
spot marked plainly on the crimes-map and which few respectable
travellers would have regarded as a haven of refuge.

But the chill of the adjacent river, and some quality of utter
desolation which seemed to emanate from the deserted wharves and
ramshackle buildings about me, were driving me thither now; for I knew
that human companionship, of a sort, and a glass of good liquor--from
a store which the Customs would have been happy to locate--awaited me
there. I might chance, too, upon Durham or Wessex, of New Scotland Yard,
both good friends of mine, or even upon the Terror of Chinatown, Chief
Inspector Kerry, a man for whom I had an esteem which none of his
ungracious manners could diminish.

I was just about to turn to the right into a narrow and nameless alley,
lying at right angles to the Thames, when I pulled up sharply, clenching
my fists and listening.

A confused and continuous sound, not unlike that which might be
occasioned by several large and savage hounds at close grips, was
proceeding out of the darkness ahead of me; a worrying, growling, and
scuffling which presently I identified as human, although in fact it
was animal enough. A moment I hesitated, then, distinguishing among
the sounds of conflict an unmistakable, though subdued, cry for help,
I leaped forward and found myself in the midst of the melee. This was
taking place in the lee of a high, dilapidated brick wall. A lamp in a
sort of iron bracket spluttered dimly above on the right, but the
scene of the conflict lay in densest shadow, so that the figures were
indistinguishable.

“Help! By Gawd! they're strangling me------”

From almost at my feet the cry arose and was drowned in Chinese
chattering. But guided by it I now managed to make out that the struggle
in progress waged between a burly English sailorman and two lithe
Chinese. The yellow men seemed to have gained the advantage and my
course was clear.

A straight right on the jaw of the Chinaman who was engaged in
endeavouring to throttle the victim laid him prone in the dirty roadway.
His companion, who was holding the wrist of the recumbent man, sprang
upright as though propelled by a spring. I struck out at him savagely.
He uttered a shrill scream not unlike that of a stricken hare, and fled
so rapidly that he seemed to melt in the mist.

“Gawd bless you, mate!” came chokingly from the ground--and the rescued
man, extricating himself from beneath the body of his stunned assailant,
rose unsteadily to his feet and lurched toward me.

As I had surmised, he was a sailor, wearing a rough, blue-serge jacket
and having his greasy trousers thrust into heavy seaboots--by which I
judged that he was but newly come ashore. He stooped and picked up his
cap. It was covered in mud, as were the rest of his garments, but he
brushed it with his sleeve as though it had been but slightly soiled and
clapped it on his head.

He grasped my hand in a grip of iron, peering into my face, and his
breath was eloquent.

“I'd had one or two, mate,” he confided huskily (the confession was
unnecessary). “It was them two in the Blue Anchor as did it; if I 'adn't
'ad them last two, I could 'ave broke up them Chinks with one 'and tied
behind me.”

“That's all right,” I said hastily, “but what are we going to do about
this Chink here?” I added, endeavouring at the same time to extricate my
hand from the vise-like grip in which he persistently held it. “He hit
the tiles pretty heavy when he went down.”

As if to settle my doubts, the recumbent figure suddenly arose and
without a word fled into the darkness and was gone like a phantom. My
new friend made no attempt to follow, but:

“You can't kill a bloody Chink,” he confided, still clutching my hand;
“it ain't 'umanly possible. It's easier to kill a cat. Come along o' me
and 'ave one; then I'll tell you somethink. I'll put you on somethink, I
will.”

With surprising steadiness of gait, considering the liquid cargo he had
aboard, the man, releasing my hand and now seizing me firmly by the
arm, confidently led me by divers narrow ways, which I knew, to a little
beerhouse frequented by persons of his class.

My own attire was such as to excite no suspicion in these surroundings,
and although I considered that my acquaintance had imbibed more than
enough for one night, I let him have his own way in order that I might
learn the story which he seemed disposed to confide in me. Settled in
the corner of the beerhouse--which chanced to be nearly empty--with
portentous pewters before us, the conversation was opened by my new
friend:

“I've been paid off from the Jupiter--Samuelson's Planet Line,” he
explained. “What I am is a fireman.”

“She was from Singapore to London?” I asked.

“She was,” he replied, “and it was at Suez it 'appened--at Suez.”

I did not interrupt him.

“I was ashore at Suez--we all was, owin' to a 'itch with the canal
company--a matter of money, I may say. They make yer pay before they'll
take yer through. Do you know that?”

I nodded.

“Suez is a place,” he continued, “where they don't sell whisky, only
poison. Was you ever at Suez?”

Again I nodded, being most anxious to avoid diverting the current of my
friend's thoughts.

“Well, then,” he continued, “you know Greek Jimmy's--and that's where
I'd been.”

I did not know Greek Jimmy's, but I thought it unnecessary to mention
the fact.

“It was just about this time on a steamin' 'ot night as I come out of
Jimmy's and started for the ship. I was walkin' along the Waghorn Quay,
same as I might be walkin' along to-night, all by myself--bit of a
list to port but nothing much--full o' joy an' happiness, 'appy an'
free--'appy an' free. Just like you might have noticed to-night, I
noticed a knot of Chinks scrappin' on the ground all amongst the dust
right in front of me. I rammed in, windmillin' all round and knocking
'em down like skittles. Seemed to me there was about ten of 'em, but
allowin' for Jimmy's whisky, maybe there wasn't more than three. Anyway,
they all shifted and left me standin' there in the empty street with
this 'ere in my 'and.”

At that, without more ado, he thrust his hand deep into some concealed
pocket and jerked out a Chinese pigtail, which had been severed,
apparently some three inches from the scalp, by a clean cut. My
acquaintance, with somewhat bleared eyes glistening in appreciation of
his own dramatic skill--for I could not conceal my surprise--dangled it
before me triumphantly.

“Which of 'em it belong to,” he continued, thrusting it into another
pocket and drumming loudly on the counter for more beer, “I can't say,
'cos I don't know. But that ain't all.”

The tankards being refilled and my friend having sampled the contents of
his own:

“That ain't all,” he continued. “I thought I'd keep it as a sort of
relic, like. What 'appened? I'll tell you. Amongst the crew there's
three Chinks--see? We ain't through the canal before one of 'em, a new
one to me--Li Ping is his name--offers me five bob for the pigtail,
which he sees me looking at one mornin'. I give him a punch on the nose
an' 'e don't renew the offer: but that night (we're layin' at Port Said)
'e tries to pinch it! I dam' near broke his neck, and 'e don't try any
more. To-night”--he extended his right arm forensically--“a deppitation
of Chinks waits on me at the dock gates; they explains as from a
patriotic point of view they feels it to be their dooty to buy that
pigtail off of me, and they bids a quid, a bar of gold--a Jimmy o'
Goblin!”

He snapped his fingers contemptuously and emptied his pewter. A sense
of what was coming began to dawn on me. That the “hold-up” near the
riverside formed part of the scheme was possible, and, reflecting on
my rough treatment of the two Chinamen, I chuckled inwardly. Possibly,
however, the scheme had germinated in my acquaintance's mind merely as
a result of an otherwise common assault, of a kind not unusual in these
parts, but, whether elaborate or comparatively simple, that the story
of the pigtail was a “plant” designed to reach my pocket, seemed a
reasonable hypothesis.

“I told him to go to China,” concluded the object of my suspicion, again
rapping upon the counter, “and you see what come of it. All I got to say
is this: If they're so bloody patriotic, I says one thing: I ain't the
man to stand in their way. You done me a good turn to-night, mate; I'm
doing you one. 'Ere's the bloody pigtail, 'ere's my empty mug. Fill the
mug and the pigtail's yours. It's good for a quid at the dock gates any
day!”

My suspicions vanished; my interest arose to boiling point. I refilled
my acquaintance's mug, pressed a sovereign upon him (in honesty I must
confess that he was loath to take it), and departed with the pigtail
coiled neatly in an inner pocket of my jacket. I entered the house in
Wade Street by the side door, and half an hour later let myself out by
the front door, having cast off my dockland disguise.




II

HOW I LOST IT



It was not until the following evening that I found leisure to examine
my strange acquisition, for affairs of more immediate importance
engrossed my attention. But at about ten o'clock I seated myself at
my table, lighted the lamp, and taking out the pigtail from the table
drawer, placed it on the blotting-pad and began to examine it with the
greatest curiosity, for few Chinese affect the pigtail nowadays.

I had scarcely commenced my examination, however, when it was
dramatically interrupted. The door bell commenced to ring jerkily. I
stood up, and as I did so the ringing ceased and in its place came a
muffled beating on the door. I hurried into the passage as the bell
commenced ringing again, and I had almost reached the door when once
more the ringing ceased; but now I could hear a woman's voice, low but
agitated:

“Open the door! Oh, for God's sake be quick!”

Completely mystified, and not a little alarmed, I threw open the door,
and in there staggered a woman heavily veiled, so that I could see
little of her features, but by the lines of her figure I judged her to
be young.

Uttering a sort of moan of terror she herself closed the door, and
stood with her back to it, watching me through the thick veil, while her
breast rose and fell tumultuously.

“Thank God there was someone at home!” she gasped.

I think I may say with justice that I had never been so surprised in my
life; every particular of the incident marked it as unique--set it apart
from the episodes of everyday life.

“Madam,” I began doubtfully, “you seem to be much alarmed at something,
and if I can be of any assistance to you------”

“You have saved my life!” she whispered, and pressed one hand to her
bosom. “In a moment I will explain.”

“Won't you rest a little after your evidently alarming experience?” I
suggested.

My strange visitor nodded, without speaking, and I conducted her to the
study which I had just left, and placed the most comfortable arm-chair
close beside the table so that as I sat I might study this woman who
so strangely had burst in upon me. I even tilted the shaded lamp,
artlessly, a trick I had learned from Harley, in order that the light
might fall upon her face.

She may have detected this device; I know not; but as if in answer to
its challenge, she raised her gloved hands and unfastened the heavy veil
which had concealed her features.

Thereupon I found myself looking into a pair of lustrous black eyes
whose almond shape was that of the Orient; I found myself looking at a
woman who, since she was evidently a Jewess, was probably no older than
eighteen or nineteen, but whose beauty was ripely voluptuous, who might
fittingly have posed for Salome, who, despite her modern fashionable
garments, at once suggested to my mind the wanton beauty of the daughter
of Herodias.

I stared at her silently for a time, and presently her full lips parted
in a slow smile. My ideas were diverted into another channel.

“You have yet to tell me what alarmed you,” I said in a low voice, but
as courteously as possible, “and if I can be of any assistance in the
matter.”

My visitor seemed to recollect her fright--or the necessity for
simulation. The pupils of her fine eyes seemed to grow larger and
darker; she pressed her white teeth into her lower lips, and resting her
hands upon the table leaned toward me.

“I am a stranger to London,” she began, now exhibiting a certain
diffidence, “and to-night I was looking for the chambers of Mr. Raphael
Philips of Figtree Court.”

“This is Figtree Court,” I said, “but I know of no Mr. Raphael Philips
who has chambers here.”

The black eyes met mine despairingly.

“But I am positive of the address!” protested my beautiful but strange
caller--from her left glove she drew out a scrap of paper, “here it is.”

I glanced at the fragment, upon which, in a woman's hand the words were
pencilled: “Mr. Raphael Philips, 36-b Figtree Court, London.”

I stared at my visitor, deeply mystified.

“These chambers are 36-b!” I said. “But I am not Raphael Philips, nor
have I ever heard of him. My name is Malcolm Knox. There is evidently
some mistake, but”--returning the slip of paper--“pardon me if I remind
you, I have yet to learn the cause of your alarm.”

“I was followed across the court and up the stairs.”

“Followed! By whom?”

“By a dreadful-looking man, chattering in some tongue I did not
understand!”

My amazement was momentarily growing greater.

“What kind of a man?” I demanded rather abruptly.

“A yellow-faced man--remember I could only just distinguish him in the
darkness on the stairway, and see little more of him than his eyes at
that, and his ugly gleaming teeth--oh! it was horrible!”

“You astound me,” I said; “the thing is utterly incomprehensible.” I
switched off the light of the lamp. “I'll see if there's any sign of him
in the court below.”

“Oh, don't leave me! For heaven's sake don't leave me alone!”

She clutched my arm in the darkness.

“Have no fear; I merely propose to look out from this window.”

Suiting the action to the word, I peered down into the court below. It
was quite deserted. The night was a very dark one, and there were many
patches of shadow in which a man might have lain concealed.

“I can see no one,” I said, speaking as confidently as possible, and
relighting the lamp, “if I call a cab for you and see you safely into
it, you will have nothing to fear, I think.”

“I have a cab waiting,” she replied, and lowering the veil she stood up
to go.

“Kindly allow me to see you to it. I am sorry you have been subjected to
this annoyance, especially as you have not attained the object of your
visit.”

“Thank you so much for your kindness; there must be some mistake about
the address, of course.”

She clung to my arm very tightly as we descended the stairs, and often
glanced back over her shoulder affrightedly, as we crossed the court.
There was not a sign of anyone about, however, and I could not make
up my mind whether the story of the yellow man was a delusion or a
fabrication. I inclined to the latter theory, but the object of such a
deception was more difficult to determine.

Sure enough, a taxicab was waiting at the entrance to the court; and my
visitor, having seated herself within, extended her hand to me, and even
through the thick veil I could detect her brilliant smile.

“Thank you so much, Mr. Knox,” she said, “and a thousand apologies. I am
sincerely sorry to have given you all this trouble.”

The cab drove off. For a moment I stood looking after it, in a state of
dreamy incertitude, then turned and slowly retraced my steps. Reopening
the door of my chambers with my key, I returned to my study and sat down
at the table to endeavour to arrange the facts of what I recognized to
be a really amazing episode. The adventure, trifling though it seemed,
undoubtedly held some hidden significance that at present was not
apparent to me. In accordance with the excellent custom of my friend,
Paul Harley, I prepared to make notes of the occurrence while the facts
were still fresh in my memory. At the moment that I was about to begin,
I made an astounding discovery.

Although I had been absent only a few minutes, and had locked my door
behind me, the pigtail was gone!

I sat quite still, listening intently. The woman's story of the yellow
man on the stairs suddenly assumed a totally different aspect--a new and
sinister aspect. Could it be that the pigtail was at the bottom of the
mystery?--could it be that some murderous Chinaman who had been lurking
in hiding, waiting his opportunity, had in some way gained access to my
chambers during that brief absence? If so, was he gone?

From the table drawer I took out a revolver, ascertained that it was
fully loaded, and turning up light after light as I proceeded, conducted
a room-to-room search. It was without result; there was absolutely
nothing to indicate that anyone had surreptitiously entered or departed
from my chambers.

I returned to the study and sat gazing at the revolver lying on the
blotting-pad before me. Perhaps my mind worked slowly, but I think that
fully fifteen minutes must have passed before it dawned on me that the
explanation not only of the missing pigtail but of the other incidents
of the night, was simple enough. The yellow man had been a fabrication,
and my dark-eyed visitor had not been in quest of “Raphael Philips,” but
in quest of the pigtail: and her quest had been successful!

“What a hopeless fool I am!” I cried, and banged my fist down upon the
table, “there was no yellow man at all--there was-----”

My door bell rang. I sprang nervously to my feet, glanced at the
revolver on the table--and finally dropped it into my coat pocket ere
going out and opening the door.

On the landing stood a police constable and an officer in plain clothes.

“Your name is Malcolm Knox?” asked the constable, glancing at a
note-book which he held in his hand.

“It is,” I replied.

“You are required to come at once to Bow Street to identify a woman
who was found murdered in a taxi-cab in the Strand about eleven o'clock
to-night.”

I suppressed an exclamation of horror; I felt myself turning pale.

“But what has it to do------”

“The driver stated she came from your chambers, for you saw her off, and
her last words to you were 'Good night, Mr. Knox, I am sincerely sorry
to have given you all this trouble.' Is that correct, sir?”

The constable, who had read out the information in an official voice,
now looked at me, as I stood there stupefied.

“It is,” I said blankly. “I'll come at once.” It would seem that I had
misjudged my unfortunate visitor: her story of the yellow man on the
stair had apparently been not a fabrication, but a gruesome fact!




III

HOW I REGAINED IT



My ghastly duty was performed; I had identified the dreadful thing,
which less than an hour before had been a strikingly beautiful woman,
as my mysterious visitor. The police were palpably disappointed at the
sparsity of my knowledge respecting her. In fact, had it not chanced
that Detective Sergeant Durham was in the station, I think they would
have doubted the accuracy of my story.

As a man of some experience in such matters, I fully recognized its
improbability, but beyond relating the circumstances leading up to my
possession of the pigtail and the events which had ensued, I could do
no more in the matter. The weird relic had not been found on the dead
woman, nor in the cab.

Now the unsavoury business was finished, and I walked along Bow Street,
racking my mind for the master-key to this mystery in which I was become
enmeshed. How I longed to rush off to Harley's rooms in Chancery Lane
and to tell him the whole story! But my friend was a thousand miles
away--and I had to see the thing out alone.

That the pigtail was some sacred relic stolen from a Chinese temple and
sought for by its fanatical custodians was a theory which persistently
intruded itself. But I could find no place in that hypothesis for the
beautiful Jewess; and that she was intimately concerned I did not doubt.
A cool survey of the facts rendered it fairly evident that it was she
and none other who had stolen the pigtail from my rooms. Some third
party--possibly the “yellow man” of whom she had spoken--had in turn
stolen it from her, strangling her in the process.

The police theory of the murder (and I was prepared to accept it) was
that the assassin had been crouching in hiding behind or beside the
cab--or even within the dark interior. He had leaped in and attacked the
woman at the moment that the taxi-man had started his engine; if already
inside, the deed had proven even easier. Then, during some block in the
traffic, he had slipped out unseen, leaving the body of the victim to be
discovered when the cab pulled up at the hotel.

I knew of only one place in London where I might hope to obtain useful
information, and for that place I was making now. It was Malay Jack's,
whence I had been bound on the previous night when my strange meeting
with the seaman who then possessed the pigtail had led to a change of
plan. The scum of the Asiatic population always come at one time or
another to Jack's, and I hoped by dint of a little patience to achieve
what the police had now apparently despaired of achieving--the discovery
of the assassin.

Having called at my chambers to obtain my revolver, I mounted an
eastward-bound motor-bus. The night, as I have already stated, was
exceptionally dark. There was no moon, and heavy clouds were spread over
the sky; so that the deserted East End streets presented a sufficiently
uninviting aspect, but one with which I was by no means unfamiliar and
which certainly in no way daunted me.

Changing at Paul Harley's Chinatown base in Wade Street, I turned my
steps in the same direction as upon the preceding night; but if my
own will played no part in the matter, then decidedly Providence
truly guided me. Poetic justice is rare enough in real life, yet I was
destined to-night to witness swift retribution overtaking a malefactor.

The by-ways which I had trodden were utterly deserted; I was far from
the lighted high road, and the only signs of human activity that reached
me came from the adjacent river; therefore, when presently an outcry
arose from somewhere on my left, for a moment I really believed that my
imagination was vividly reproducing the episode of the night before!

A furious scuffle--between a European and an Asiatic--was in progress
not twenty yards away!

Realizing that such was indeed the case, and that I was not the victim
of hallucination, I advanced slowly in the direction of the sounds,
but my footsteps reechoed hollowly from wall to wall of the narrow
passage-way, and my coming brought the conflict to a sudden and dramatic
termination.

“Thought I wouldn't know yer ugly face, did yer?” yelled a familiar
voice. “No good squealin'--I got yer! I'd bust you up if I could!”
 (a sound of furious blows and inarticulate chattering) “but it ain't
'umanly possible to kill a Chink------”

I hurried forward toward the spot where two dim figures were locked in
deadly conflict.

“Take that to remember me by!” gasped the husky voice as I ran up.

One of the figures collapsed in a heap upon the ground. The other
made off at a lumbering gait along a second and even narrower passage
branching at right angles from that in which the scuffle had taken
place.

The clatter of the heavy sea-boots died away in the distance. I stood
beside the fallen man, looking keenly about to right and left; for an
impression was strong upon me that another than I had been witness of
the scene--that a shadowy form had slunk back furtively at my approach.
But the night gave up no sound in confirmation of this, and I could
detect no sign of any lurker.

I stooped over the Chinaman (for a Chinaman it was) who lay at my feet,
and directed the ray of my pocket-lamp upon his yellow and contorted
countenance. I suppressed a cry of surprise and horror.

Despite the human impossibility referred to by the missing fireman, this
particular Chinaman had joined the shades of his ancestors. I think that
final blow, which had felled him, had brought his shaven skull in
such violent contact with the wall that he had died of the thundering
concussion set up.

Kneeling there and looking into his upturned eyes, I became aware that
my position was not an enviable one, particularly since I felt little
disposed to set the law on the track of the real culprit. For this
man who now lay dead at my feet was doubtless one of the pair who had
attempted the life of the fireman of the Jupiter.

That my seafaring acquaintance had designed to kill the Chinaman I did
not believe, despite his stormy words: the death had been an accident,
and (perhaps my morality was over-broad) I considered the assault to
have been justified.

Now my ideas led me further yet. The dead Chinaman wore a rough blue
coat, and gingerly, for I found the contact repulsive, I inserted
my hand into the inside pocket. Immediately my fingers closed upon a
familiar object--and I stood up, whistling slightly, and dangling in my
left hand the missing pigtail!

Beyond doubt Justice had guided the seaman's blows. This was the man who
had murdered my dark-eyed visitor!

I stood perfectly still, directing the little white ray of my flashlight
upon the pigtail in my hand. I realized that my position, difficult
before, now was become impossible; the possession of the pigtail
compromised me hopelessly. What should I do?

“My God!” I said aloud, “what does it all mean?”

“It means,” said a gruff voice, “that it was lucky I was following you
and saw what happened!”

I whirled about, my heart leaping wildly. Detective-Sergeant Durham was
standing watching me, a grim smile upon his face!

I laughed rather shakily.

“Lucky indeed!” I said. “Thank God you're here. This pigtail is a
nightmare which threatens to drive me mad!”

The detective advanced and knelt beside the crumpled-up figure on the
ground. He examined it briefly, and then stood up.

“The fact that he had the missing pigtail in his pocket,” he said, “is
proof enough to my mind that he did the murder.”

“And to mine.”

“There's another point,” he added, “which throws a lot of light on the
matter. You and Mr. Harley were out of town at the time of the Huang
Chow case; but the Chief and I outlined it, you remember, one night in
Mr. Harley's rooms?”

“I remember it perfectly; the giant spider in the coffin------”

“Yes; and a certain Ah Fu, confidential servant of the old man, who used
to buy the birds the thing fed on. Well, Mr. Knox, Huang Chow was the
biggest dealer in illicit stuff in all the East End--and this battered
thing at our feet is--Ah Fu!”

“Huang Chow's servant?”

“Exactly!”

I stared, uncomprehendingly, and:

“In what way does this throw light on the matter?” I asked.

Durham--a very intelligent young officer--smiled significantly.

“I begin to see light!” he declared. “The gentleman who made off just as
I arrived on the scene probably had a private quarrel with the Chinaman
and was otherwise not concerned in any way.”

“I am disposed to agree with you,” I said guardedly.

“Of course, you've no idea of his identity?”

“I'm afraid not.”

“We may find him,” mused the officer, glancing at me shrewdly, “by
applying at the offices of the Planet Line, but I rather doubt it. Also
I rather doubt if we'll look very far. He's saved us a lot of trouble,
but”--peering about in the shadowy corners which abounded--“didn't I see
somebody else lurking around here?”

“I'm almost certain there was someone else!” I cried. “In fact, I could
all but swear to it.”

“H'm!” said the detective. “He's not here now. Might I trouble you to
walk along to Limehouse Police Station for the ambulance? I'd better
stay here.”

I agreed at once, and started off.

Thus a second time my plans were interrupted, for my expedition that
night ultimately led me to Bow Street, whence, after certain formalities
had been observed, I departed for my chambers, the mysterious pigtail
in my pocket. Failing the presence of Durham, the pigtail must have been
retained as evidence, but:

“We shall know where to find it if it's wanted, Mr. Knox,” said the Yard
man, “and I can trust you to look after your own property.”

The clock of St. Paul's was chiming the hour of two when I locked the
door of my chambers and prepared to turn in. The clangour of the final
strokes yet vibrated through the night's silence when someone set my own
door bell loudly ringing.

With an exclamation of annoyance I shot back the bolts and threw open
the door.

A Chinaman stood outside upon the mat!




IV

HOW IT ALL ENDED



“Me wishee see you,” said the apparition, smiling blandly; “me comee
in?”

“Come in, by all means,” I said without enthusiasm, and, switching on
the light in my study, I admitted the Chinaman and stood facing him
with an expression upon my face which I doubt not was the reverse of
agreeable.

My visitor, who wore a slop-shop suit, also wore a wide-brimmed bowler
hat; now, the set bland smile still upon his yellow face, he removed the
bowler and pointed significantly to his skull.

His pigtail had been severed some three inches from the root!

“You gotchee my pigtail,” he explained; “me callee get it--thank you.”

“Thank you,” I said grimly. “But I must ask you to establish your claim
rather more firmly.”

“Yessir,” agreed the Chinaman.

And thereupon in tolerable pidgin English he unfolded his tale. He
proclaimed his name to be Hi Wing Ho, and his profession that of a
sailor, or so I understood him. While ashore at Suez he had become
embroiled with some drunken seamen: knives had been drawn, and in the
scuffle by some strange accident his pigtail had been severed. He
had escaped from the conflict, badly frightened, and had run a great
distance before he realized his loss. Since Southern Chinamen of his
particular Tong hold their pigtails in the highest regard, he had
instituted inquiries as soon as possible, and had presently learned from
a Chinese member of the crew of the S.S. Jupiter that the precious queue
had fallen into the hands of a fireman on that vessel. He (Hi Wing Ho)
had shipped on the first available steamer bound for England, having in
the meanwhile communicated with his friend on the Jupiter respecting the
recovery of the pigtail.

“What was the name of your friend on the Jupiter?”

“Him Li Ping--yessir!”--without the least hesitation or hurry.

I nodded. “Go on,” I said.

He arrived at the London docks very shortly after the Jupiter. Indeed,
the crew of the latter vessel had not yet been paid off when Hi Wing
Ho presented himself at the dock gates. He admitted that, finding the
fireman so obdurate, he and his friend Li Ping had resorted to violence,
but he did not seem to recognize me as the person who had frustrated
their designs. Thus far I found his story credible enough, excepting
the accidental severing of the pigtail at Suez, but now it became
wildly improbable, for he would have me believe that Li Ping, or Ah Fu,
obtaining possession of the pigtail (in what manner Hi Wing Ho protested
that he knew not) he sought to hold it to ransom, knowing how highly Hi
Wing Ho valued it.

I glared sternly at the Chinaman, but his impassive countenance served
him well. That he was lying to me I no longer doubted; for Ah Fu could
not have hoped to secure such a price as would justify his committing
murder; furthermore, the presence of the unfortunate Jewess in the case
was not accounted for by the ingenious narrative of Hi Wing Ho. I was
standing staring at him and wondering what course to adopt, when yet
again my restless door-bell clamoured in the silence.

Hi Wing Ho started nervously, exhibiting the first symptoms of alarm
which I had perceived in him. My mind was made up in an instant. I took
my revolver from the drawer and covered him.

“Be good enough to open the door, Hi Wing Ho,” I said coldly.

He shrank from me, pouring forth voluble protestations.

“Open the door!”

I clenched my left fist and advanced upon him. He scuttled away with his
odd Chinese gait and threw open the door. Standing before me I saw my
friend Detective Sergeant Durham, and with him a remarkably tall and
very large-boned man whose square-jawed face was deeply tanned and whose
aspect was dourly Scottish.

When the piercing eyes of this stranger rested upon Hi Wing Ho an
expression which I shall never forget entered into them; an expression
coldly murderous. As for the Chinaman, he literally crumpled up.

“You rat!” roared the stranger.

Taking one long stride he stooped upon the Chinaman, seized him by the
back of the neck as a terrier might seize a rat, and lifted him to his
feet.

“The mystery of the pigtail, Mr. Knox,” said the detective, “is solved
at last.”

“Have ye got it?” demanded the Scotsman, turning to me, but without
releasing his hold upon the neck of Hi Wing Ho.

I took the pigtail from my pocket and dangled it before his eyes.

“Suppose you come into my study,” I said, “and explain matters.”

We entered the room which had been the scene of so many singular
happenings. The detective and I seated ourselves, but the Scotsman,
holding the Chinaman by the neck as though he had been some inanimate
bundle, stood just within the doorway, one of the most gigantic
specimens of manhood I had ever set eyes upon.

“You do the talking, sir,” he directed the detective; “ye have all the
facts.”

While Durham talked, then, we all listened--excepting the Chinaman, who
was past taking an intelligent interest in anything, and who, to judge
from his starting eyes, was being slowly strangled.

“The gentleman,” said Durham--“Mr. Nicholson--arrived two days ago from
the East. He is a buyer for a big firm of diamond merchants, and some
weeks ago a valuable diamond was stolen from him------”

“By this!” interrupted the Scotsman, shaking the wretched Hi Wing Ho
terrier fashion.

“By Hi Wing Ho,” explained the detective, “whom you see before you. The
theft was a very ingenious one, and the man succeeded in getting away
with his haul. He tried to dispose of the diamond to a certain Isaac
Cohenberg, a Singapore moneylender; but Isaac Cohenberg was the bigger
crook of the two. Hi Wing Ho only escaped from the establishment of
Cohenberg by dint of sandbagging the moneylender, and quitted the town
by a boat which left the same night. On the voyage he was indiscreet
enough to take the diamond from its hiding-place and surreptitiously to
examine it. Another member of the Chinese crew, one Li Ping--otherwise
Ah Fu, the accredited agent of old Huang Chow!--was secretly watching
our friend, and, knowing that he possessed this valuable jewel, he also
learned where he kept it hidden. At Suez Ah Fu attacked Hi Wing Ho and
secured possession of the diamond. It was to secure possession of the
diamond that Ah Fu had gone out East. I don't doubt it. He employed Hi
Wing Ho--and Hi Wing Ho tried to double on him!

“We are indebted to you, Mr. Knox, for some of the data upon which
we have reconstructed the foregoing and also for the next link in the
narrative. A fireman ashore from the Jupiter intruded upon the scene at
Suez and deprived Ah Fu of the fruits of his labours. Hi Wing Ho seems
to have been badly damaged in the scuffle, but Ah Fu, the more wily of
the two, evidently followed the fireman, and, deserting from his own
ship, signed on with the Jupiter.”

While this story was enlightening in some respects, it was mystifying in
others. I did not interrupt, however, for Durham immediately resumed:

“The drama was complicated by the presence of a fourth character--the
daughter of Cohenberg. Realizing that a small fortune had slipped
through his fingers, the old moneylender dispatched his daughter in
pursuit of Hi Wing Ho, having learned upon which vessel the latter had
sailed. He had no difficulty in obtaining this information, for he is in
touch with all the crooks of the town. Had he known that the diamond had
been stolen by an agent of Huang Chow, he would no doubt have hesitated.
Huang Chow has an international reputation.

“However, his daughter--a girl of great personal beauty--relied upon her
diplomatic gifts to regain possession of the stone, but, poor creature,
she had not counted with Ah Fu, who was evidently watching your chambers
(while Hi Wing Ho, it seems, was assiduously shadowing Ah Fu!). How she
traced the diamond from point to point of its travels we do not know,
and probably never shall know, but she was undeniably clever and
unscrupulous. Poor girl! She came to a dreadful end. Mr. Nicholson,
here, identified her at Bow Street to-night.”

Now the whole amazing truth burst upon me.

“I understand!” I cried. “This”--and I snatched up the pigtail--

“That my pigtail,” moaned Hi Wing Ho feebly.

Mr. Nicholson pitched him unceremoniously into a corner of the room, and
taking the pigtail in his huge hand, clumsily unfastened it. Out from
the thick part, some two inches below the point at which it had been cut
from the Chinaman's head, a great diamond dropped upon the floor!

For perhaps twenty seconds there was perfect silence in my study. No one
stooped to pick the diamond from the floor--the diamond which now had
blood upon it. No one, so far as my sense informed me, stirred. But
when, following those moments of stupefaction, we all looked up--Hi Wing
Ho, like a phantom, had faded from the room!






THE HOUSE OF GOLDEN JOSS





I

THE BLOOD-STAINED IDOL


“Stop when we pass the next lamp and give me a light for my pipe.”

“Why?”

“No! don't look round,” warned my companion. “I think someone is
following us. And it is always advisable to be on guard in this
neighbourhood.”

We had nearly reached the house in Wade Street, Limehouse, which my
friend used as a base for East End operations. The night was dark but
clear, and I thought that presently when dawn came it would bring a
cold, bright morning. There was no moon, and as we passed the lamp and
paused we stood in almost total darkness.

Facing in the direction of the Council School I struck a match. It
revealed my ruffianly looking companion--in whom his nearest friends
must have failed to recognize Mr. Paul Harley of Chancery Lane.

He was glancing furtively back along the street, and when a moment later
we moved on, I too, had detected the presence of a figure stumbling
toward us.

“Don't stop at the door,” whispered Harley, for our follower was only a
few yards away.

Accordingly we passed the house in which Harley had rooms, and had
proceeded some fifteen paces farther when the man who was following us
stumbled in between Harley and myself, clutching an arm of either. I
scarcely knew what to expect, but was prepared for anything, when:

“Mates!” said a man huskily. “Mates, if you know where I can get a
drink, take me there!”

Harley laughed shortly. I cannot say if he remained suspicious of the
newcomer, but for my own part I had determined after one glance at
the man that he was merely a drunken fireman newly recovered from a
prolonged debauch.

“Where 'ave yer been, old son?” growled Harley, in that wonderful
dialect of his which I had so often and so vainly sought to cultivate.
“You look as though you'd 'ad one too many already.”

“I ain't,” declared the fireman, who appeared to be in a semi-dazed
condition. “I ain't 'ad one since ten o'clock last night. It's dope
wot's got me, not rum.”

“Dope!” said Harley sharply; “been 'avin' a pipe, eh?”

“If you've got a corpse-reviver anywhere,” continued the man in that
curious, husky voice, “'ave pity on me, mate. I seen a thing to-night
wot give me the jim-jams.”

“All right, old son,” said my friend good-humouredly; “about turn! I've
got a drop in the bottle, but me an' my mate sails to-morrow, an' it's
the last.”

“Gawd bless yer!” growled the fireman; and the three of us--an odd trio,
truly--turned about, retracing our steps.

As we approached the street lamp and its light shone upon the haggard
face of the man walking between us, Harley stopped, and:

“Wot's up with yer eye?” he inquired.

He suddenly tilted the man's head upward and peered closely into one of
his eyes. I suppressed a gasp of surprise for I instantly recognized the
fireman of the Jupiter!

“Nothin' up with it, is there?” said the fireman.

“Only a lump o' mud,” growled Harley, and with a very dirty handkerchief
he pretended to remove the imaginary stain, and then, turning to me:

“Open the door, Jim,” he directed.

His examination of the man's eyes had evidently satisfied him that our
acquaintance had really been smoking opium.

We paused immediately outside the house for which we had been bound, and
as I had the key I opened the door and the three of us stepped into a
little dark room. Harley closed the door and we stumbled upstairs to a
low first-floor apartment facing the street. There was nothing in its
appointments, as revealed in the light of an oil lamp burning on the
solitary table, to distinguish it from a thousand other such apartments
which may be leased for a few shillings a week in the neighbourhood.
That adjoining might have told a different story, for it more closely
resembled an actor's dressing-room than a seaman's lodging; but the door
of this sanctum was kept scrupulously locked.

“Sit down, old son,” said my friend heartily, pushing forward an old
arm-chair. “Fetch out the grog, Jim; there's about enough for three.”

I walked to a cupboard, as the fireman sank limply down in the chair,
and took out a bottle and three glasses. When the man, who, as I could
now see quite plainly, was suffering from the after effects of opium,
had eagerly gulped the stiff drink which I handed to him, he looked
around with dim, glazed eyes, and:

“You've saved my life, mates,” he declared. “I've 'ad a 'orrible
nightmare, I 'ave--a nightmare. See?”

He fixed his eyes on me for a moment, then raised himself from his seat,
peering narrowly at me across the table.

“I seed you before, mate. Gaw, blimey! if you ain't the bloke wot
I giv'd the pigtail to! And wot laid out that blasted Chink as was
scraggin' me! Shake, mate!”

I shook hands with him, Harley eyeing me closely the while, in a
manner which told me that his quick brain had already supplied the link
connecting our doped acquaintance with my strange experience during his
absence. At the same time it occurred to me that my fireman friend
did not know that Ah Fu was dead, or he would never have broached the
subject so openly.

“That's so,” I said, and wondered if he required further information.

“It's all right, mate. I don't want to 'ear no more about blinking
pigtails--not all my life I don't,” and he sat back heavily in his chair
and stared at Harley.

“Where have you been?” inquired Harley, as if no interruption had
occurred, and then began to reload his pipe: “at Malay Jack's or at
Number Fourteen?”

“Neither of 'em!” cried the fireman, some evidence of animation
appearing in his face; “I been at Kwen Lung's.”

“In Pennyfields?”

“That's 'im, the old bloke with the big joss. I allers goes to see Ma
Lorenzo when I'm in Port o' London. I've seen 'er for the last time,
mates.”

He banged a big and dirty hand upon the table.

“Last night I see murder done, an' only that I know they wouldn't
believe me, I'd walk across to Limehouse P'lice Station presently and
put the splits on 'em, I would.”

Harley, who was seated behind the speaker, glanced at me significantly.

“Sure you wasn't dreamin'?” he inquired facetiously.

“Dreamin'!” cried the man. “Dreams don't leave no blood be'ind, do
they?”

“Blood!” I exclaimed.

“That's wot I said--blood! When I woke up this mornin' there was blood
all on that grinnin' joss--the blood wot 'ad dripped from 'er shoulders
when she fell.”

“Eh!” said Harley. “Blood on whose shoulders? Wot the 'ell are you
talkin' about, old son?”

“Ere”--the fireman turned in his chair and grasped Harley by the
arm--“listen to me, and I'll tell you somethink, I will. I'm goin' in
the Seahawk in the mornin' see? But if you want to know somethink, I'll
tell yer. Drunk or sober I bars the blasted p'lice, but if you like
to tell 'em I'll put you on somethink worth tellin'. Sure the bottle's
empty, mates?”

I caught Harley's glance and divided the remainder of the whisky evenly
between the three glasses.

“Good 'ealth,” said the fireman, and disposed of his share at a draught.
“That's bucked me up wonderful.”

He lay back in his chair and from a little tobacco-box began to fill a
short clay pipe.

“Look 'ere, mates, I'm soberin' up, like, after the smoke, an' I can
see, I can see plain, as nobody'll ever believe me. Nobody ever does,
worse luck, but 'ere goes. Pass the matches.”

He lighted his pipe, and looking about him in a sort of vaguely
aggressive way:

“Last night,” he resumed, “after I was chucked out of the Dock Gates, I
made up my mind to go and smoke a pipe with old Ma Lorenzo. Round I goes
to Pennyfields, and she don't seem glad to see me. There's nobody
there only me. Not like the old days when you 'ad to book your seat in
advance.”

He laughed gruffly.

“She didn't want to let me in at first, said they was watched, that if
a Chink 'ad an old pipe wot 'ad b'longed to 'is grandfather it was good
enough to get 'im fined fifty quid. Anyway, me bein' an old friend she
spread a mat for me and filled me a pipe. I asked after old Kwen Lung,
but, of course, 'e was out gamblin', as usual; so after old Ma Lorenzo
'ad made me comfortable an' gone out I 'ad the place to myself, and
presently I dozed off and forgot all about bloody ship's bunkers an'
nigger-drivin' Scotchmen.”

He paused and looked about him defiantly.

“I dunno 'ow long I slept,” he continued, “but some time in the night I
kind of 'alf woke up.”

At that he twisted violently in his chair and glared across at Harley:

“You been a pal to me,” he said; “but tell me I was dreamin' again and
I'll smash yer bloody face!”

He glared for a while, then addressing his narrative more particularly
to me, he resumed:

“It was a scream wot woke me--a woman's scream. I didn't sit up; I
couldn't. I never felt like it before. It was the same as bein' buried
alive, I should think. I could see an' I could 'ear, but I couldn't move
one muscle in my body. Foller me? An' wot did I see, mates, an' wot did
I 'ear? I'm goin' to tell yer. I see old Kwen Lung's daughter------”

“I didn't know 'e 'ad one,” murmured Harley.

“Then you don't know much!” shouted the fireman. “I knew years ago, but
'e kept 'er stowed away somewhere up above, an' last night was the first
time I ever see 'er. It was 'er shriek wot 'ad reached me, reached me
through the smoke. I don't take much stock in Chink gals in general, but
this one's mother was no Chink, I'll swear. She was just as pretty as a
bloomin' ivory doll, an' as little an' as white, and that old swine Kwen
Lung 'ad tore the dress off of 'er shoulders with a bloody great whip!”

Harley was leaning forward in his seat now, intent upon the man's
story, and although I could not get rid of the idea that our friend
was relating the events of a particularly unpleasant opium dream,
nevertheless I was fascinated by the strange story and by the strange
manner of its telling.

“I saw the blood drip from 'er bare shoulders, mates,” the man continued
huskily, and with his big dirty hands he strove to illustrate his words.
“An' that old yellow devil lashed an' lashed until the poor gal was past
screamin'. She just sunk down on the floor all of a 'cap, moanin' and
moanin'--Gawd! I can 'ear 'er moanin' now!”

“Meanwhile, 'ere's me with murder in me 'eart lyin' there watchin',
an' I can't speak, no! I can't even curse the yellow rat, an' I can't
move--not a 'and, not a foot! Just as she fell there right up against
the joss an' 'er blood trickled down on 'is gilded feet, old Ma Lorenzo
comes staggerin' in. I remember all this as clear as print, mates,
remember it plain, but wot 'appened next ain't so good an' clear.
Somethink seemed to bust in me 'ead. Only just before I went off, the
winder--there's only one in the room--was smashed to smithereens an'
somebody come in through it.”

“Are you sure?” said Harley eagerly. “Are you sure?”

That he was intensely absorbed in the story he revealed by a piece of
bad artistry, very rare in him. He temporarily forgot his dialect. Our
marine friend, however, was too much taken up with his own story to
notice the slip, and:

“Dead sure!” he shouted.

He suddenly twisted around in his chair.

“Tell me I was dreamin', mate,” he invited, “and if you ain't dreamin'
in 'arf a tick it won't be because I 'aven't put yer to sleep!”

“I ain't arguin', old son,” said Harley soothingly. “Get on with your
yarn.”

“Ho!” said the fireman, mollified, “so long as you ain't. Well, then,
it's all blotted out after that. Somebody come in at the winder, but 'oo
it was or wot it was I can't tell yer, not for fifty quid. When I woke
up, which is about 'arf an hour before you see me, I'm all alone--see?
There's no sign of Kwen Lung nor the gal nor old Ma Lorenzo nor anybody.
I sez to meself, wot you keep on sayin'. I sez, 'You're dreamin',
Bill.'”

“But I don't think you was,” declared Harley. “Straight I don't.”

“I know I wasn't!” roared the fireman, and banged the table lustily. “I
see 'er blood on the joss an' on the floor where she lay!”

“This morning?” I interjected.

“This mornin', in the light of the little oil lamp where old Ma Lorenzo
'ad roasted the pills! It's all still an' quiet an' I feel more dead
than alive. I'm goin' to give 'er a hail, see? When I sez to myself,
'Bill,' I sez, 'put out to sea; you're amongst Kaffirs, Bill.' It
occurred to me as old Kwen Lung might wonder 'ow much I knew. So I beat
it. But when I got in the open air I felt I'd never make my lodgin's
without a tonic. That's 'ow I come to meet you, mates.

“Listen--I'm away in the old Seahawk in the mornin', but I'll tell you
som

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